Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
Nov 12, 2007
Shohei Imamura, 2001, Japan, 35mm, 120 min
A combination of Keaton-esque whimsy, improvised mythology and Imamura's own facility with the underbelly of life, WARM WATER is a quirky, charming film about rebirth, renewal and a raucous cheering for the power of the feminine. Starring Koji Yakusho, star of THE EEL, Imamura's twentieth film is about a middle-aged man whose wife has left him. He then travels to a far-off village in search of a golden Buddha. What he finds instead is a woman with a strange case of kleptomania and a propensity for expressing pleasure with a shower of – well -- on the big screen it comes across like fireworks.
May well be Imamura's funniest film; it is also one of his most accomplished…A complex and risky work carried off with an effortlessness that comes only from wisdom and experience."-Kevin Thomas, LOS ANGELES