Posted by tjparsons on Sun, 19 Jul 2009 6:10pm
TITLE: Crazed Fruit
GENRE: Drama
DATE: 1956
RUNNING TIME: 86 min
RATING: Not Rated
FORMAT: DVD, VHS
SCRIPT: Shintarô Ishihara
DIRECTOR: Ko Nakahira
STARRING: Ayuko Fujitshiro, Taizo Fukami, Mie Kitahara
Commentary by: Starship ED
One of the earliest and best of Nikkatsu Studios' "Sea Tribe" films
which form a sort of cultural corollary to the American teen angst
films coming out at that same time. Still, it's a little bit shocking
to consider a film made just eleven years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki
should be about essentially spoiled upper middle class teens who
discuss and dismiss Marx in favor of trendy Western consumption, joke
about adopting boredom as a manifesto. They're punks who look like
Mouseketeers.
Two brothers, Haruji and the older, more experienced Natshisa, are
competing for the same girl. The girl Iri joins innocent Haruji and
they sunbathe together. The date is chaste, silent, sexually charged.
When they're together onscreen, Nakahira uses every filmic license at
hand to push up the emotional ante and create an over-the-top dark
suburban romanticism the super real equal of _American Beauty_.
Natshisa has been with an addle-brained young prostitute, thinks he
knows a bad girl when he's seen one. He discovers that Iri is several
years older than Haruji and that she's married to an American
businessman, presses his advantage to sleep with her. Everything comes
to a stylish very bad end but the self-seriousness of the teenage
nihilism hangs a bit ripe in the air immediately after the last title
card.
The music by Masaru Sato relies on Hawaiian guitarist Toru Takemitsu's
phsychedelic chromatic slides to support Nakahira's visions, especially
in theatrical close-ups against rear projections while water skiing or
sunbathing. The moonbathing scenes are delirious.
Mie Kitahara gives a subtle and knowing performance as the "older" Eri.
She was one of the finest young actresses then working in Japan and
this is one of her best films.
