After director Seijun Suzuki was fired by Nikkatsu for the sheer audaciousness of Branded to Kill, he didn’t permanently abandon the industry. Instead, he emerged from ten years in the blacklist wilderness with this bold comeback for competing studio Shochiku. In a delicious twist of fate, he ended up shooting the film on Nikkatsu sets using Nikkatsu crew, in effect making this another Suzuki/Nikkatsu project in everything but the studio title card.
Buy A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness Blu-rayWhen a laidback editor of a sport magazine is directed to turn a comely fashion model named Yoko into a pro golfer, he has no idea how much her fame will explode. Upon winning her first pro tournament, Yoko turns into a media sensation and lands a gig as the star of her own TV talk show, far surpassing the magazine’s original goal of simply enhancing her marketability for commercial considerations. Unfortunately, with fame also comes a crazy stalker, in this case a demented neighbor lady who gloms onto Yoko, ultimately blackmailing her into being her unwilling friend until disaster strikes.
The unconventional story feels like two movies in one, with the first half detailing Yoko’s rise to glory with the help of her older burnout coach, and the second devolving into a deadly game of coercion and vengeance centering on the psychotic neighbor lady. There’s some practical reasoning for this unexpected transformation, with Suzuki reportedly not too keen on the Yoko actress, Reiko Sakuraba, a total amateur with no acting experience hired only because she was the producer’s mistress. In fairness, Sakuraba obviously lacks range, but I didn’t mind her performance in the mostly undemanding role, and she’s clearly easy on the eyes, which makes up for quite a bit in a B-movie.
Although the story was adapted from a popular manga, Suzuki’s arresting visual flair and plot twists confirm his triumphant return to the role of auteur. The vibrant color choices aren’t quite as marked as his vividly hued masterpiece, Tokyo Drifter, in part due to the golf theme moving much of the action outside in the daylight, a stark contrast to the prior film’s more tightly controlled interiors and night scenes. Still, he leans heavily on bright primary offsetting colors to craft an eye-popping canvas, while his unique story turns whipsaw viewers to a shocking ending so far out of leftfield as to delightfully defy all expectations.
The new limited edition Blu-ray includes an expansive booklet with new and archival writing about Suzuki and the film. While the disc is short on bonus-feature variety, with only a new 20-minute interview with the film’s editor, it includes an audio commentary track and newly improved English subtitles. No restoration notes are provided, but the film was transferred in hi def by Shochiku and supplied to Radiance as a digital file in the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The print shows significant specks in the early going, but seems to improve further into the film. The mono soundtrack is clear of defects and presented in Dolby audio.
A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness fully proves that Suzuki’s maverick nature wasn’t dulled by his ten years in feature-film purgatory. While it falls just short of his trailblazing ‘60s masterpieces, it’s a wholly fascinating work by this master filmmaker that, if nothing else, should make all film fans mourn for what we missed out on during his forced ten-year feature-film sabbatical.
