“A Snake of June” Review: An Engaging Oddity
If you’ve been following this site for a little while, it’s likely you’ve come across some of our prior stops on the tour of Japanese filmmaker Shinya Tuskamoto‘s career. While his prior films were horror movies and thrillers centered on the transformative power of rage and destruction, this next one, A Snake of June, is something a bit different. The film is an unusual drama about a couple trapped in a loveless marriage. However things begin to change when the wife (Asuka Kurosawa), a suicide hotline worker, becomes the target of a blackmailing campaign carried out by a terminally ill photographer (Tsukamoto). She becomes blackmailed into acting out various erotic fantasies of hers, and while repulsed at first, she eventually comes to enjoy it, transforming herself, her germaphobic husband, and their relationship.
A plot synopsis of the film wouldn’t entirely do it justice, especially considering that the narrative is rather strange. Like his other works, the narrative has a tendency to jump around and leave much unsaid, linking ideas through associative editing and imagery. Much of the action is driven less by the needs of the plot, and more by the inner worlds of the characters, as well as the themes of repression, desire, voyeurism, and liberation. It is also extremely stylish, taking place almost entirely in the pouring rain, and utilizing many of Tsukamoto’s signature cinematic techniques, such as frenetic, textural camera movement and high contrast monochrome photography, this time tinted blue instead of the traditional black and white, all of which come together in a sensational climactic sequence near the end of the film. Tsukamoto also manages to utilize his cyberpunk tendencies in a few very striking sequences reminiscent of his most famous work, Tetsuo.
While the film has a good deal to say about sexual repression and freedom, it also is something of a metaphor for filmmaking, and film watching, itself. The photographer acts as both artist and audience. By spying on the couple, he sees into their inner lives and armed with his camera, he begins “directing” them to create a new narrative for them, one in which they a freer, healthier people. However both his motives and his methods are not remotely pure. While he wishes to help the wife, he holds the husband in contempt, and while he seeks to help her partly for his own sake, he also does so for his own perverse pleasure. And while his impact on their lives ultimately brings the couple close together, the photographer relies on blackmail, manipulation, intimidation, and even violence to make it all happen. Metaphorically speaking, the film positions the filmmaker as a complex figure, neither wholly good nor evil, who creates and destroys, and who creates life changing works of art, but at a great physical and emotional toll to all involved, especially his “actors”. These actions are done partly for art’s sake, but also for selfish reasons. Although like all works of art, film is a living thing, and can take on a life of its own beyond the control of any filmmaker, which ends up happening to the photographer in A Snake of June.
While something of a far cry from the energetic madness of Tetsuo and Tokyo Fist, A Snake of June is an interesting entry in Tsukamoto’s filmography and it’s definitely worth a watch for those willing to seek it out.
