A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness, aka A Tale of Sorrow (Hishu monogatari) is a 1977 film from Japan directed by Seijun Suzuki.
Nichiei Fabrics is looking for a new model for their products. A competitor, Far East Fabrics, has hired a well-known gymnast named Sybulski to be their model. Nichiei decides to try and top this by finding a Japanese female athlete to model their clothes.
Nichiei approaches a golf reporter, Mr. Miyake. He recommends one Reiko Sakuraba, a caddy, amateur golfer, and extremely good-looking woman. However she is not particularly well-known, and the folks at Nichiei believe that she needs to win something in order to compete against Far East Fabrics and the European gymnast. Mr. Miyake, who becomes Reiko's unofficial manager, gets a coach named Takagi. After a grueling training regimen, Reiko enters a big women's golf tournament—and wins! She gets the modeling contract, she gets her own daytime TV chat show sponsored by Nichiei, and she and Miyake become lovers.
All of that happens in the first half of a 93-minute movie. The second half involves Kayo Senboh, neighbor of Reiko's who is a few years older. She develops an odd, stalkerish fixation on Reiko, but Reiko can't even remember her neighbor's name. One night when Miyake is driving Reiko home, he hits Senboh, who was out and about in the street. Miyake keeps driving, justifying leaving Senboh on the street by telling Reiko that a car accident would wreck her career. But Senboh isn't dead, and she knows who hit her. She comes staggering in to Reiko's house that very night, making threats. Soon, Senboh has blackmailed her way into Reiko's home, and every aspect of Reiko's life.
Seijun Suzuki's first film in ten years, after he was blackballed following his lawsuit against Nikkatsu Studios.
Tropes:
- The Cameo: Jo Shishido, tough-guy star of Suzuki's action films and cop dramas of the 1960s, pops up as the detective who arrests Miyake.
- The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: Miyake is out on the golf course with the man from Nichiei. Miyake takes a mighty swing at the ball on the tee, and misses completely. He swings again, and the ball dribbles forward about six feet. When the Nichiei guy expresses disbelief that Miyake writes for a golf magazine, Miyake says the Japanese equivalent of this very phrase, translated in the subtitles as "A sandalmaker's children go barefoot."
- Depraved Bisexual: Senboh. She demands a kiss from Reiko, then forcefully says she's not a lesbian—and then moments later she's wondering about making Reiko be a prostitute. She also tells the crowd of people in Reiko's house to strip her, and she eventually forces Reiko to have sex with Senboh's husband. She's clearly sexually fixated on Reiko, but she also seems to dig men, as shown by how turned on she gets when being caressed by Miyake, although even that may be because Miyake is Reiko's lover.
- Down to the Last Play: Reiko wins the golf tournament when her bunker shot on the 18th green goes in the hole.
- Enfant Terrible: The bizarre ending has Reiko's little brother, apparently disgusted with the sexual depravities he's seen in the house, kill everyone. The boy, who looks about 13, beats both Senboh and her husband to death with golf clubs, then pulls out a gun (where did a boy in Japan get a gun?) and shoots his own sister.
- Fan Disservice
- Reiko, naked on her bed, doing some kind of exercise where she leans forward and touches her toes—while she is breathing rapidly and suffering a panic attack.
- Towards the end, after all the people in the neighborhood have basically ransacked Reiko's home, they force her to parade for them in her bikini. Somebody sticks a foot out and she falls. Senboh pulls the wig off and cold-bloodedly says "Strip her,", and they do.
- Fire Purifies: The film ends with Reiko's little brother, who has killed Reiko, Senboh, and Senboh's husband, setting fire to the house.
- Food Slap: A Nichiei executive responds to Miyake's hard bargaining by pouring a drink on his head. Miyake is not fazed at all.
- Genre Mashup: An odd juxtaposition of a lady golfer hitting the big time, with a psychologically intense tale of an evil stalker.
- Gratuitous English: Reiko, psyching herself up, says "Victory!" in English as she strides down the fairway to the decisive 18th green.
- I Just Want to Be You: Senboh, Reiko's neighbor, develops a weird fixation on her. She winds up taking over Reiko's life and subjecting her to repeated humiliations.
- Jump Cut: There are many abrupt, startling jump cuts. One scene has Miyake angrily dragging Senboh by the scruff of her neck, then, via a sudden jump cut, showing Miyake and Senboh in a partially constructed house having a passionate embrace.
- Kubrick Stare: Senboh forces Reiko to allow all the neighborhood women into her house—but then Reiko charms them all. Senboh shoots a menacing Kubrick stare as she watches Reiko making new friends.
- Loony Fan: Senboh. Before the accident she was weirdly fixated on Reiko, copying Reiko's signature and distributing said copies to her nonplussed neighbors. After the accident, she uses the threat of blackmail to worm her way into Reiko's life—giving Reiko a Traumatic Haircut, forcing her way onto Reiko's chat show, demanding a kiss from Reiko, and eventually strong arming Reiko into sex with her husband. And as she reveals towards the end, she actually stepped in front of Reiko's car on purpose.
- Scenery Censor: Reiko the Ms. Fanservice is lounging in bed after sex with Miyake, totally naked—but with just enough of a corner of the bedsheet carefully placed over her private area.
- Shameful Strip: Senboh makes Reiko parade around in a bikini for the neighbors, then tells them to "Strip her." Bizarrely, they do.
- Shower of Love: Reiko and Miyake have sex in the shower.
- Shower Scene: Both Miyake and Reiko have shower scenes in quick succession, followed by a Shower of Love.
- Sports Stories: A champion women's golfer runs afoul of a demented stalker.
- Training Montage: A montage shows Reiko practicing in front of a wind machine and under a rain machine. Then she's shown pulling a tire through the woods to build strength. Then she's shown practicing chipping, and by that point she's training so hard that her palms are bleeding.
- Traumatic Haircut: After blackmailing Reiko with the threat of turning her in to the police, Senboh grabs some scissors and roughly cuts off Reiko's hair. Near the end she humiliates Reiko by pulling off Reiko's wig in front of a crowd of people.
