Ôshima on UK BluRay: EMPIRE OF PASSION (1978) review

If you're making a film about bad people doing bad things, you owe it to your audience to give them some reason - no matter how ambiguous or artistic - why they should care what's happening. Common sense, maybe? Still, what keeps Nagisa Oshima's Empire of Passion good rather than great is the legendary director lets us watch a couple descend into madness, haunted (quite literally) by a terrible thing they've done, but gives us precious little opportunity to sympathise and never suggests the ending's ever in doubt. As a piece of cinema it's arguably more enjoyable than his more famous films - it's well acted, expertly shot and aesthetically far richer than the groove carved out by the notorious In the Realm of the Senses. But you can at least understand why people would call Senses a milestone, if perhaps not a masterpiece. Empire of Passion is a solid piece of genre cinema, but not really much more. It's definitely worth a watch, but from a director of Oshima's calibre that has to feel like something of a missed opportunity.

Seki (Kazuko Yoshiyuki) is a married woman raising her infant son in a peaceful country village with her husband Gisaburo (Takahiro Tamura). Unknown to Gisaburo, Seki's actually carrying on an affair with Toyoji (Tatsuya Fuji) the hotblooded young man who stops by their house to bring her tokens of endearment. Fed up with sharing his lover with another man, Toyoji convinces Seki they should kill her husband, and though initially horrified, she agrees. The two of them carry out the murder and dispose of the body, yet they have to keep their affair a secret for fear their guilt will be blatantly obvious. After several long years pretending Gisaburo left for Tokyo to look for work, the strain begins to tell, with Seki's daughter (returned from working away) increasingly convinced something's wrong, rumours spreading through the village and spectral visions popping up that may not be their imagination.

Empire is thus a straight-up morality play, for the most part. While it tries to introduce some ambiguity, it undercuts this to some extent by all but announcing straight out it's introducing some ambiguity. While the period setting is meticulously realised, it doesn't have any particular relevance to the story at hand, and again, there's never any suggestion things are headed anywhere but straight down. To be fair, Empire is less about bad people doing bad things than an attempt to show the extremes people are capable of when they're convinced a single person is the linchpin of their whole world, and there are times when it gets something almost profound out of this approach. Unfortunately Empire came right after In the Realm of the Senses, and if there was one thing that film did do better than most of the competition it was providing a visual depiction of utterly transcendent obsession.

Which is not to say Empire of Passion doesn't try. It's a tad slow to start; the visuals are gorgeous and the languid mood seems partly intentional, but the opening scene-setting does drag more than it ought to and character development is somewhat thin on the ground. Still, like many films of this sort, things abruptly get a good deal more interesting once the perpetrators are past the point of no return and everything slowly begins to fall apart. Tatsuya Fuji turns in another sterling performance after Senses - while Oshima didn't want to revisit the carnal excesses of the previous film, Toyoji is a believable temptation, brooding and magnificent despite being something of a sulking manchild (though he doesn't look even close to 26 years his co-star's junior). Yet the film is arguably more Kazuko Yoshiyuki's; Seki's the one plagued by ghosts, and a growing terror her younger lover is about to abandon her now she's no longer interesting and losing her nerve, and the actress rises to the challenge superbly. Her guilt is plainly well-deserved, but she's so terrified we can't help but feel for her a little.

And when it openly turns into a supernatural cautionary tale Empire of Passion is genuinely eerie, like a deleted story from Kwaidan, only with far more naturalistic art direction. There aren't many effects, and one of those is admittedly comically low-budget, but for the most part Oshima and DP Yoshio Miyajima work wonders with theatrical staging, simple smoke rigs or dissolves and the power of suggestion. The woodland around the village or the streets at night evoke slowly mounting fear, and the pity in Seki's daughter's eyes is haunting when the girl realises what her mother did, and what her punishment will be whether or not the law gets wind of it. One later setpiece with the couple desperately trying to make some kind of spiritual amends for their crimes makes you wonder if Koji Suzuki watched the movie as a young man.

But while the couple's commitment in the face of impending doom does work fairly well if you read it like a haunting Zen koan (even more so after the artfully bleak little epilogue) it never feels like enough of a foundation to properly support the film. Oshima simply doesn't explore the idea as deeply as the central relationship in Senses, whether it's the early suggestion Seki doesn't understand the implications of what she's doing (letting us know everything after that is going to reflect how naïve she is), or the focus on Seki over Toyoji (he does get his own problems, but nothing as immediate as hers). It's a far more fully realised film than Senses, but while it definitely gets unfairly passed over you have to admit that's not without reason. Still, if you're happy to accept the great man just wanted to make a ghost story, Empire of Passion makes for a good one, a feast for the eyes fronted by two talented actors that still manages some real scares despite its flaws. Consider it recommended.

THE DISC:

Available to buy now, the UK edition of Empire of Passion from Studio Canal UK - previously known as Optimum Films - has been released as one of three Oshima films available on BluRay in the UK for the first time. Empire of Passion gets a solid HD presentation, not without some shortcomings but a quality transfer that shows off the visuals to captivating effect, backed with some reasonable extra features (though one of these is oddly intent on downplaying the film's worth). The disc boots straight from the distributor's logo into the main menu over a single static image from the film. The menu is clear and easy to navigate. The film has been divided into eight chapter stops.

The disc carries the original mono 2.0 soundtrack, which is clean, clear and shows off Toru Takemitsu's elegant score to great effect. Removable subtitles are large, easily legible and seemingly free from grammatical or spelling errors.

The picture is good, if not quite up to Studio Canal's transfer on In the Realm of the Senses. Despite a heavy amount of grain the image is sharp and detailed, doing a fine job of showing off the intricate village set (painstakingly built in a remote location). Colours are not quite as vibrant as the other film, but the slightly muted look does arguably work to Empire's advantage, giving it an almost painterly feel in places. It's not demo material, but this is still an eye-catching release.

There are only two extras on the BluRay: Sur le Tournage is a short retrospective flitting between various talking heads reminiscing about the production, featuring many of the same people who contribute to the extras on Empire of Passion. It's a fairly freeform piece, but a genial one and it does bring up a decent amount of interesting trivia, whether singling out details about Empire, discussing Oshima's methods or comparing the making of the film with Senses.

The hour-long Panel Discussion at Birkbeck College is a puzzling inclusion here; featuring the same moderator and three scholars who also appear on the BluRay for In the Realm of the Senses, it's clear which of the two films they'd rather be discussing. Again, while all the participants are obviously knowledgeable enough and they're entitled to their likes and dislikes it seems like something of a slap in the face to be openly denigrating the film they're supposed to be analysing - constantly finding it wanting, all but relegating it to a mere commercial transaction and spending most of the first fifteen minutes talking about how it represents a backward step from In the Realm of the Senses. One even goes so far as to term this the beginning of Oshima's 'decline into fame', which comes across less as scholarly deconstruction and more pretentious snark, to be blunt.

Empire of Passion is definitely a flawed film deserving of some criticism; even for those who failed to be won over by In the Realm of the Senses, Empire clearly lacks the insight and sheer bravado of the director's more famous work. Nonetheless it's arguably a far more enjoyable film, and if Oshima's intellect isn't so much in evidence here his artistic expression is still in full flood. It's just a ghost story, true, and rather too straightforward for its own good, but it's still a haunting, gorgeously constructed ghost story with a talented cast and crew, one that invites repeat viewings for actual cinematic pleasure rather than material for film studies dissertations. If you don't get your expectations too high, Studio Canal UK's BluRay is an enjoyable way to see this solid little film (if you can overlook it trying to tell you to go watch something else). Consider it recommended.

(Thanks go to Optimum Films/Studio Canal UK and EM Foundation PR for facilitating this review.)