From the day that Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man hit these shores he has had a rock solid global reputation as a cinematographer and experimentalist, known for shooting bizarre, visceral sequences of images obsessed with the interaction of humanity and technology. His reputation on that front is well deserved as Tetsuo is a true masterpiece of experimental film making and it has been justly hailed as a masterpiece of cyberpunk art. What people miss with all the hype around Tetsuo, however, is Tsukamoto’s growing desire, and ability, to wed his more surreal urges to living, breathing human characters, creating some stunning character studies in the process. He first got the mixture right with Bullet Ballet and, after a brief foray into commercial film making with Gemini, Tsukamoto returned to his distinctive vision with 2002’s A Snake of June, a film that I truly believe stands as Tsukamoto’s masterpiece.
Shot in gorgeous blue tinted monochrome A Snake of June is the culmination of a basic script idea Tsukamoto had been working on for roughly twenty years. A domestic drama on one level, a psychological thriller on another, a voyeuristic psycho-sexual journey on yet another, A Snake of June – like most of Tsukamoto’s work – utterly defies easy classification.
The film revolves around Rinko. A counselor with a mental health crisis telephone line Rinko’s entire life revolves around helping others. She is married to an older man – a bland, slightly creepy, slightly overweight, work-consumed, middle aged, cleanliness obsessed older man – and if there was ever any spark between the two of them that spark has long since died out. Though they occupy the same living space they can hardly be said to be sharing it. The relationship, obviously, is entirely non-physical. Rinko has responded to this by burying herself in her work, and by indulging herself with a rich fantasy life, a life kept entirely to herself and hidden well out of sight of her husband.
Rinko’s life is shaken to its core when she receives an anonymous package in the mail. Inside she finds a package of photographs and a cell phone. The photos are all of her, all shot when she was in the supposed privacy of her own home. There are shots of her masturbating, shots of her dressing in hyper-sexual clothing and parading for an imaginary audience, in short all of the shots feature Rinko’s sexual fantasies. As she is taking this in and coming to the obvious conclusion that she has a stalker the cell phone rings. The photographer – played by Tsukamoto himself - is a former client from the phone help line, someone who Rinko talked out of committing suicide. Stricken with a fatal illness he has decided to make Rinko the central purpose of his remaining days and, believing that she has fated herself to a half life through her self imposed sexual repression, he now intends to impose some therapy upon her. “Do as I say”, he tells her, “and I will give you the negatives to all of these photographs so that you may destroy them. Otherwise I will give them all to your husband and likely destroy your marriage in the process.” Rinko agrees and her unseen tormentor then sets her on a course to publicly live out her fantasies.
The synopsis reads like the plot of a base exploitation film and Tsukamoto himself has said that he initially intended to make a film that verged on pornography but abandoned that concept as too cliché. What he has given us instead is something far more complex and ambiguous with a good bit less blatant sexuality than you might suspect. What begins as a woman’s public humiliation gradually transforms into a sexual empowerment film, so much so that radical feminist film maker Catherine Breillat has labeled this one of the most important films of its time. It begins with a failed marriage, or at least one that is certainly fading fast, and through an extreme sequence of events and comes to the conclusion that honesty with ourselves about our own needs, particularly our sexual needs but certainly not limited to such, is an absolute necessity to life. Tsukamoto’s character occupies an interesting, though difficult, niche in the film. He is undoubtedly a voyeur, certainly wildly unethical, but he seems to legitimately care about Rinko’s well being and effects a strong positive change in her life. As Tsukamoto himself says in an included interview it is difficult to tell if his character is an angel or a demon.
Beyond the plot and character complexities the film is elevated well beyond what you might expect through a great number of technical details. Tsukamoto, as always, has a striking eye for visual detail. Nobody else shoots film like this man and much of his finest work is here. Though, by and large, he avoids the peculiar tech hybrids that he is known for he sneaks in a pair of classic Tsukamoto scenes with the underground sex club in particular jammed with visuals that Gilliam and Jeunet could only dream of matching. His production designers capture a vision of urban life that is walled in by concrete, entirely rigid and boxed in, and then positively drench it with rain. This is a very wet movie and the technique is used to great effect, both in terms of audio and video.
And what of the DVD itself? Presented in the original full frame ratio with DTS sound to fully immerse you in all those rain effects, the DVD does a solid job of bringing the film to our shores. Though there are only two special features of note, they are very good ones, the first being a series of very in depth interviews with the cast of the film and the second a similarly in depth batch of interviews with the technical crew.