TITLE: Imprint? Well it certainly left a mark…
I'd heard that Takashi Miike's contribution to SHOWTIME'S Masters of Horror, entitled "Imprint," was deemed "2 Hot for TV!" and thus relegated to DVD release.
The bane of Netflix is that it's very easy for me to check out stuff that, given any barrier of access, I would skip. Thus, I often end up with red envelopes stuffed with virulent nonsense. This, my friends, is one such case. In a cruel irony, SHOWTIME aired the episode shortly after my envelope arrived.
Maybe I'm not being completely truthful. I am always interested in what Miike is up to. His cameo was my favorite part of Hostel and, I think, it was the only part of the second half that showcased any of the wit Eli Roth conveyed in Cabin Fever. I'm not sure what I like best about Takashi Miike. For one thing, he makes so many movies, I can't help but be impressed by his work ethic. I mean, something like five dozen movies in just about 15 years? That's an insane amount of movie-making going on. Compared to directors who labor for years and years over each project, striving to get everything "just right", Miike seems to approach making movies with a more freewheeling attitude. That has its drawbacks, of course: his movies can be all over the place, and a lot of them are, um, uneven at best. But this is part of their charm: Miike doesn't seem to let any kind of good taste or sense of what is appropriate get in his way.
I also like that he not only makes a lot of movies, but he makes a lot of different kinds of movies: sci-fi, horror, fantasy, yakuza, avant-garde arty things, samurai, erotic melodrama, musicals, police procedurals, and on and on. Plus, I like that when he decides to go over the edge, he really goes over the edge. Like, he doesn't pussyfoot around with taboos. He's transgressive in the most wildly, flamboyant way (sometimes disturbingly so!!!), but it never comes off as mere posturing.
If I had to choose a favorite among his films, well, boringly, it would probably be Audition. Audition is his one film that really feels like a coherent movie. But, for die hard Miike fans, that may be a bad thing: it's too much like the kind of movies other directors make. Something that gets to his particular craziness is probably Visitor Q or Dead or Alive or, even though it's a real mess, The Happiness of the Katikuris (his zombie musical!!!).
All that said, I have no problem calling "Imprint" an unmitigated train wreck. I don't think anyone would call Miike an actor's director, but sometimes, like in Audition, we see that he can connect with his actors the same way David Lynch can—by getting them on his wave length and, somehow, miraculously, keeping them there. So, one of the main reasons I wanted to check out "Imprint" was the casting of Billy Drago.
Drago's terrifying performance as Capone enforcer, Frank Nitti in De Palma's The Untouchables and his brief turn as an AIDS suffering, lesion-ridden john in Gregg Araki's terrific Mysterious Skin show incredible range and ability. He's one of the most underused character actors of the last 20 years. Sadly, he's never able to link up with Miike in a constructive way.
Let me step back a moment and describe this spectacle. "Imprint" follows Drago's late Victorian journalist, Christopher, to a secret island brothel, where he hopes to find his lost love, Komomo (Michie Itô) and rescue her from sex slave status. When he doesn't find her, he's stuck in the brothel and awkwardly ends up spending the night (the Madame insists he choose a woman) with a hideously deformed prostitute (Youki Kudoh).Before long, she explains to Christopher that Komomo is dead, but she waivers on the facts, describing several possible scenarios—sort of like Rashomon if all the POVs came from one person.
These scenarios, as well as those chronicling the deformed woman's life, are told flashback-style, and make up the bulk of "Imprint". I don't want to give away too much narrative (which is paper thin and ends with an incongruous, obscene revelation), but both types of flashbacks include torture and murder aplenty. The problem is, the story of "Imprint"—Christopher's lost love and the prostitute's tragic past-- are poetic folktale nightmares. Miike's torture scenes are punishing and sadistic. Subtlety and restraint are not Miike's forte, but his mixture of tragic folktale and matter-of-fact brutality goes down like blood and porridge.