Yumeji (1991)

Yumeji: Directed by Seijun Suzuki. With Kenji Sawada, Tomoko Mariya, Masumi Miyazaki, Tamasaburô Bandô. Painter and poet Yumeji Takehisa (1884-1934) gets involved with a beautiful widow, becoming a rival of her dead husband’s ghost and the jealous lover who murdered him.

“u0026quot;Fairly speaking, Suzukiu0026#39;s male protagonists are made up by cowards, Aochi is too retiring and prim to acknowledge his feelings for geisha O-Ine (Ôtani) and her doppelgänger Sono (Ôtani again), Nakasagou0026#39;s ill-treated wife; Shunko is a spooky fool who is none the wiser in the parlous game of temptation and sadomasochism; whereas Yumeji (rocker Sawada) is reduced to a skirt chaser whose raffish charm is lost on audience. Meantime, Suzuki and his scribe Yôzô Tanaka concoct a counterbalance in the person of Yoshio Harada, who appears in all three pictures (although in KAGERO-ZA, his role is a minor one), and basically plays the same character, the fickle, macho, irresponsible type, who is both attracted and repelled by pretty women, a standpoint streams across the trilogy.u0026quot;u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eread my full review on my blog: cinema omnivore, thanks”