Kagero-za

Based on a story by Kyoka Izumi--whose writings influenced a number of playwrights and filmmakers, particularly Kenji Mizoguchi--"Kagero-Za" is another wildly inventive installment in the jump-cut, luridly hued, crazy-quilt pantheon of Suzuki.

The fever-dream follow-up to his acclaimed "Zigeunerweisen", the enigmatically erotic "Kagero-Za" is the second film in Seijun Suzuki's Taisho Trilogy--this time set in the disjointed cityscapes and surrounding countryside of 1926 Tokyo.

Playwright Matsuzaki (Yusaku Matsuda) crosses paths with a beautiful woman on her way to the hospital who tells him a friend is dying. Frightened of a mysterious older woman who sells the fruit of the Chinese Lantern Plant--rumored to be distaff souls--she implores Matsuzaki to accompany her. At first he refuses, but later finds himself so obsessed with this luminous apparition that he wants nothing more than a life of carnality and excessive passion. Matsuzaki eventually follows a trail of messages left by his phantasmal enchantress across the country to Kanazawa--only to realize he is actually being lured to his own certain demise...