#15
Post
by therewillbeblus » Sun Jun 13, 2021 1:25 am
This is an incredible film, and probably the best Masumura I've seen so far. The narrative initially poses like The Collector but dissolved away from insulating class and intellectual issues, and towards a melding of psychosexual desires that posture at the universal denominators under their idiosyncratic exteriors. I think Masumura is first and foremost a master at merging people and their characteristics as ingredients into an anthropological soup, a process that often exposes deep-seated issues with identity, occasionally posing as vehicles for empowerment without actually endorsing such a fabricated and simplified position. Here there is a genuineness to the pair's impetuses and malleable fusions that seems less cynical, magnetizing us to the perverse while seeing it as both uncomfortable, detrimental, and a broad composite of the absurdity of our romantic unions in general.
The film also addresses our obsession with art, and objectifying people in a similar way as authentic, since we can't earnestly access the soul with objectivity. The default to the physical as celebrated truth reminds me of Kechiche's focus on carnal palpability, associating exploitation with naturalistic, even spiritual, appreciation. The violence intervenes just as organically when power structures and relationship dynamics are threatened or shift, and Masumura appears to comprehend deeply that this isn't tragic per se (even when the result is death) but a necessary avenue for reform and rebirth when these systemic alterations are set in motion, destruction going hand in hand with creation.
The eventual depiction of adapting sexually as they evolve a tolerance for satiability reads as a transparently urgent portrait of accelerated conflict that one may falsely assume to be neutrality. Masumura is so talented at moderating extremes that we comfortably exist in the thickness of his murky, delicious broth; for as tragic as the film leans in its parallels to addiction, exemplified determinist agony, and concession of hope, there is no apathy to be found. Masumura is equitably feeding us a passionate celebration, accepting our desire for 'more' as natural, and surrendering to its paradoxical cravings on us by lowering the shields that bar us from perversions. This amusingly runs counter to the goal of nirvana- in exposition and thematic experience of our characters, we can only hope to modify ourselves to get the most from life, and hope that we have a willing partner to help us feel intimate in this journey of contradictory impulses without judgment.
The high highs and low lows ultimately devolve into fatalist demise, but is the film a tragedy? I'm not convinced. It's certainly not a cautionary tale, because this is the world as Masumura sees it and there's never any choice these characters can make that might offer them reprieve from the intrinsic developments that commence. This is partly the best Masumura film because it synthesizes his themes of humanity's powerlessness contending with their own unidentifiable drives -translating conceptions of mortality, emotional sensations, and physiological urges into tangible forms in pleasure and pain, touch and ideas- in a fashion that communicates the magnitude of this ineffable, acute, and intense crisis in the mise en scene and tone. The film is as alive as its characters, accumulating energy and surreal desperation until it too collapses and dies; musing on low-functioning creatures, exhausted from thinking and feeling so much that it's a heavenly relief to arrive at a concrete thesis- even if it's no more true than all the equally-fervent experiences that preceded the deceleration. After all, most of life is resigned to the acceleration, and Masumura is far too spirited towards life to place much stock in any streamlined epiphany.