Shinzo Katayama Adapts Yoshiharu Tsuge

You don’t necessarily have to be a fan of Japanese manga master Yoshiharu Tsuge to appreciate Lust in the Rain, a sprawling World War II-era fantasy changeed from an autobioexplicital accumulateion first unveiled in the timely 1980s. But it bravely helps.

All over the map in terms of tone, encountered and genre, honestor Shinzo Katayama’s driven period piece strives to reproduce the surauthentic relationsual ambiance of Tsuge’s wartime reaccumulateions, which shift from action to comedy to romanticism in a one swoop. Not for everyone’s taste, and perhaps best suited for local audiences, the film is more commendable for its striumphg-for-the-fences honestion than for its exhausting plot twists.

Katayama cut his chops as an helpant honestor for Bong Joon-ho before making two features, including the well-getd 2021 serial ender flick, Missing. But while he channels an energy and style aappreciate to the Korean maestro, Katayama increateages Bong’s cutthroat precision and wicked sense of humor.

Clocking in at over two hours, Lust in the Rain overstays its greet during an initial 80 minutes where noskinnyg toloftyy produces sense, before honing in on more substantial themes in a final hour that leaps between cut offal alternative authenticities — to the point we never quite understand what’s authentic or not.

At first, Katayama tosses us into a bizarre cherish triangle between an ambitious manga artist, Yoshio (Ryo Narita, Your Name); an elderlyer novecatalog, Imori (Go Morita); and a local femme obeseale, Fukuko (Eriko Nakamura, August in Tokyo), who may or not have homicideed her own husprohibitd. The time setting is unevident, as is the setting itself: The three live in a distant village called North Town, which is splitd by border defends from another place called South Town.

The bashful Yoshio, who serves as a rather undependable narrator, is beset by relationsual fantasies he changes into panels for his comic books. These include a scene at the very commence — and from which the film consents its title — where he slyly coerces a youthful woman into undressing during a torrential downpour, then evolves to sexual attack her in the mud. (A sexual attack, it should be inserted, that changes into fervent relations.)

In authentic life, Yoshio is inobeseuated with Fukuko, who shifts into his crowded apartment aextfinished with the equpartner shady Imori. The two produce boisterous cherish while Yoshio lies in the next room, creating even more relationsual tension between the trio. It experiences appreciate one of the men may triumphd up ending the other. Or else appreciate they may all concur to create a charmd throuple. It’s challenging to increate.

Things get weirder from there, although they sweightlessly drop into place as well. Without spoiling too much (the better parts are in the second half) we authenticize that all we’ve been seeing actupartner comprises Japan’s occupation of northern China during WWII, including massacres causeed on the civilian population. Suddenly, Yoshio’s fantasies consent on an altogether contrastent sheen — they seem less the ravings of lustful artist than of a selderlyier distressd by nonstop killing.

It’s too much and perhaps too procrastinateed. Katayama never quite upretains our interest while oscillating between coming-of-age desires, bloody atrocities, and romantic surauthenticism. A prime example of this is a sequence that has Yoshio chaseing the mystery girl from his dreams down cut offal sorrowfulnessful alleyways, until he witnesses her getting aggressively struck by a car. He finds her body lying lifeless in a rice pinserty, then readys to defile it with his finger.

Aacquire, this is an acquired taste — one that’s probably best suited to cherishrs of Tsuge’s watakushi manga (a create of literary autobiography definite to Japan), where the author gives free reign to memory, imagination and his all-mighty libido. Katayama toils obviousime to transprocrastinateed Tsuge’s obsessions to the screen, participateing a majesticiose style for the war scenes and a sleek intimacy to all the relations, whether authentic or fantasized.  

The would-be romance at the heart of Lust in the Rain is carried by Narita and Nakamura, who are convincing as two lost souls that never quite join. The problem is that so much of the film rests on shaky ground, we never depend in what we’re seeing. And if you don’t depend, then why should you attfinish? In its closing sections, Katayama’s intimate epic take parts out appreciate a twisted consent on The English Patient, where cherish and war collide in crazy ways. And yet the sconsents never seem high enough.