Michiyo Ookusu in Kagero-za (1981)

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Two decades after making a name for himself as the cutting-edge creator of Japanese yakuza fare like Tokyo Drifter (1966) and Branded to Kill (1967), Seijun Suzuki broadens his palette somewhat with the lyrical and feverish Kagero-za (1981). The second installment in the director’s Taisho Trilogy, the experimental foray centers on a series of smoldering encounters between a playwright (Yusaku Matsuda) and a mysterious mistress (Michiyo Ookusu) who might be a ghost. Suzuki uses this outline as a springboard for artistic flights of fancy––abrupt jump cuts, skewed camera angles, and boldly colored tableaux––but Ookusu is the thread that ties everything together, shedding her kimono to keep male viewers enraptured.