Kawaita hana

Yakuza thriller meets Charles Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil. The penultimate Ninjin Club production marks a breakthrough for the inaugural New Wave director Masahiro Shinoda. His deep dark film noir, filmed in Cinemascope, is an existentialist drama about Yakuza Muraki (Ryo Ikebe), who returns to his old gang after serving his sentence for murder. While gambling in an illegal club, he meets Saeko (Mariko Kaga), a mysterious and daring player, to whom he is attracted. What seems like a relationship for a moment ultimately leads even deeper into a stylized shadow world lined with Toru Takemitsu's avant-garde and jazz sounds and framed with impressive camera work. (mg)