A Courtesan With Flowered Skin
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A Courtesan With Flowered Skin
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Hawaii Film Festival
Film Review: ‘A Courtesan With Flowered Skin’
Reviewed at Hawaii Film Festival (Spotlight on Japan), Nov. 6, 2014. (Also in Tokyo, Montreal World film festivals.) Running time: 102 MIN. (Original title: “Hanayoi dochu”)
Production:
(Japan) A Tokyo Theatres release of a Toei Tokyo Movie Studios production. (International sales: Nikkatsu, Tokyo.) Produced by Gen Sato, Yoshikazu Yago. Executive producer, Kazuo Kato.
Crew:
Directed by Keisuke Toyoshima. Screenplay, Ishin Kamo, based on the novel "Hanayoi dochu" by Ayako Miyagi. Camera (color, HD), Osamu Fujiishi; editor, Takero Yoneda; music, Shuhei Kamimura; production designer, Sorato Matsuzaki; sound (Dolby Digital), Masahiro Nishida; assistant director, Toshimitsu Hayashi.
With:
Yumi Adachi, Yasushi Fuchikami, Ena Koshino, Kanji Tsuda, Tomochika, Kenji Matsuda, Saki Takaoka, Eriko Nakamura, Mansaku Fuwa, Yoko Mitsuya, Ayano Tachibana, Hanako Takigawa.
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This Japanese costume drama tells a familiar tale with style.
The familiar tale of a prostitute who breaks her golden rule and falls in love is given polished treatment in the Japanese costume drama “A Courtesan With Flowered Skin.” A traditionally filmed adaptation of Ayako Miyagi’s 2006 novel, “Hanayoi dochu,” the pic boasts a compelling central perf by Yumi Adachi and is notable for remaining fully clothed apart from one harrowing sex scene and another of great beauty. A tale of desire and freedom that’s erotically charged but certainly not titillating, “Courtesan” is worth the attention of fest programmers and specialized smallscreen outlets. It opened locally on Nov. 8.
The setting is the 1860s, during the dying days of Japan’s insular Edo period. Introducing herself in voiceover narration as “a purebred prostitute of the Yoshiwara gutters,” Asagiri (Adachi) belongs to the oiran , a high-class category of entertainer and pleasure giver whose popularity declined with the rise of more affordable geishas in the 19th century. A fragile beauty who looks much younger than her thirtyish years, Asagiri has been raised in brothels since the death of her mother (Eriko Nakamura), an abusive prostitute who branded the girl with a burning opium pipe, leaving her with flower-like markings that become more visible when she is emotionally aroused.
The meticulously shot and scripted introductory sequences give viewers a detailed look at the day-to-day life of Asagiri, which involves elaborate costume, makeup and hairdressing preparations for evenings spent perched in a display window to attract passing males. A pragmatist who’s lived by the rule of never looking for love with clients or seeking a rich man to buy out her contract, Asagiri will soon finish her term of indentured service at the Yoshiwara district brothel run by chirpy Mr. Yamadaya and hard-nosed Madam Okatsu (Tomochika). The intriguing aspect here is that Asagiri is at once looking forward to freedom and scared of it. As she says, “I’ve come from nowhere, and I’m also going nowhere.”
The game-changer is a chance meeting on the street in daytime with Hanjiro (Yasushi Fuchikami), a handsome artisan with great knowledge of textiles and dyes used for kimonos. Following a lovely meet-cute in which Hanjiro retrieves a wooden sandal Asagiri has lost in a busy marketplace, the couple’s chaste relationship deepens before their real worlds collide. Hoping to secure a valuable work contract, Hanjiro attends the house of Yoshidaya (Kanji Tsuda), an important client who has invited Asagiri and several other oiran to supply the evening’s entertainment. In a lengthy and confrontational scene that encapsulates the power dynamics and social realities of the day, Hanjiro remains silent while the wealthy senior man rapes Asagiri in front of him.
As expected, Asagiri and Hanjiro’s romance nosedives before confessions and explanations are made, passions are rekindled in a beautifully filmed sequence, and hitherto unknown connections between the couple are revealed. The most crucial of these revolves around the seen-in-flashback character of Kirisato (Saki Takaoka), a courtesan who raised Asagiri and died in ignominious circumstances after her so-called freedom was bought by the heartless Yoshidaya.
The screenplay by Ishin Kamo neatly balances the ultimately tragic central drama with a secondary narrative thread involving Asagiri’s friend Yatsu (Ena Koshino). Introduced as a naive dreamer who’s crushed when rich client Oshimaya (Kenji Matsuda) fails to buy her freedom as anticipated, Yatsu is seen gradually adopting the hard-line attitude espoused by Asagiri, to the point where she becomes a highly skilled manipulator of Oshimaya’s emotions and finances.
With the invaluable assistance of graceful camerawork, strong performances and impeccable production and costume design, helmer Keisuke Toyoshima invokes the atmosphere of classical erotic arthouse dramas such as “In the Realm of the Senses.” Though it doesn’t attain the intense peaks of such a masterpiece, and marred slightly by a few lines of dialogue that sound much more 21st century than 19th, “Courtesan” earns an honorable place in this wing of Japanese cinema. All other technical credits are first-rate.
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Yumi Adachi stars in Keisuke Toyoshima’s first feature as a young Edo prostitute in 1860s Japan
HANAYOI DOCHU (A COURTESAN WITH FLOWERED SKIN) Still - H 2014
There’s no denying the prurient appeal of a tale about exotic prostitutes that plays with the blurred line between art and sex. Though there is plenty here to stimulate male fantasies, A Courtesan with Flowered Skin ( Hanayoi Dochu ) falls more on the artistic side of the equation, and one shockingly graphic sex scene is an essential key to the entire story. Still it should benefit art house distributors with substantial crossover appeal, after bowing at fests like Montreal, Tokyo and Hawaii. Based on Ayako Miyagi ’s award-winning novel set during the Edo period in 1860s Japan, this melancholy costumer about a high-class prostitute called an oiran achieves a very nice period look without always being able to hit the right notes in the acting and direction, which can feel disturbingly contemporary.
Director Keisuke Toyoshima ’s first feature finds the story’s emotional center in the performance of young actress Yumi Adachi as the juvenile queen of a fancy Edo bordello. As the film well illustrates, the oiran were indentured high-class prostitutes living in brothels within special walled cities. Like the geisha, they entertained clients with their graceful conversation and musical skills. They wore the same white face makeup and elaborate hairstyles, but wore their obi in a distinctive knot in the front, like a giant butterfly perched on their breasts.
Asagiri (Adachi) is a sad-eyed, strong-willed girl bound to a house of the rising sun in the so-called pleasure district of Yoshiwara. Every night, from inside a painted bamboo cage, the girls preen in full regalia for men passing on the street.
Asagiri’s mother was a “wretched gutter whore” who tortured her daughter with a hot opium pipe, creating small burns in the shape of flowers all over her body. When she died, Asagiri was taken in by the courtesan Kirisato ( Saki Takaoka ), famous for being a mistress of “the courtesan parade”. Shown only briefly in the film but to great visual effect, this involved walking in an elaborate mincing gait while balancing on astonishing 8-inch platform shoes.
As the story opens, Kirisato has recently died, after being “freed” from the brothel by the rich businessman Yoshidaya ( Kanji Tsuda ). Asagiri, too, is looking forward to completing her indentured service and leaving, when she meets a young handsome artisan on the street, Hanjiro ( Yasushi Fuchikami ). Their tender feelings for each other soon turn to disillusionment, however. In a repellent but powerful scene, she takes a group of girls to the house of Kirisato’s lascivious businessman-protector for a night of “entertainment” and is brutally raped in front of Hanjiro. Their anguished exchange of glances, each powerless to stop the cruel humiliation, speaks worlds about the hierarchy of Japanese society and the status of women. The physicality of the scene is hardly erotic but painful to watch, as Yoshidaya exposes her and comments on how the delicate “flowers” that cover her skin deepen in color when she flushes.
In a parallel story, Asagiri’s friend Yatsu ( Ena Koshino ) is also disappointed in love, but masters the art of cold-hearted manipulation. Asagiri and Hangiro’s true love is, instead, indicated by a very long and passionate love-making scene and, of course, noble self-sacrifice.
The film’s recreation of the place and time, expecially period costumes with their strange patterns and colors is one of its more notable achievements, and casts an aura of historical authenticity over the well-worn love story. Undercutting the period feeling is the modern acting and direction that sometimes suggests contemporary teenagers in love, and lines like, “Spread your legs, earn your keep.”
Production companies: Toei Tokyo Movie Studios
Cast: Yumi Adachi, Yasushi Fuchikami, Ena Koshino, Tomochika, Saki Takaoka, Kanji Tsuda
Director: Keisuke Toyoshima
Screenwriter: Ishin Kamo based on the novel by Ayako Miyagi
Producers: Gen Sato, Yoshikazu Yago
Executive producer: Kazuo Kato
Director of photography: Osamu Fujiishi
Music: Shuhei Kamimura
Sales Agent: Nikkatsu
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