Kagero-za ("Heat Haze Theater") is a 1981 film from Japan directed by Seijun Suzuki.
A playwright, Matsuzaki, is out and about when he meets a strange woman, who is on the way to the hospital to visit a sick friend. He continues to meet her on other occasions, seemingly by chance. The woman turns out to be Shinako, the wife of Tamawaki, Matsuzaki's wealthy patron. Eventually they have an affair, and Shinako becomes convinced that they must "die as lovers." Tamawaki himself seems to be aware of all this, and taking a strange pleasure from it.
Meanwhile, there is the matter of Tamawaki's second wife, Ine. Ine was supposedly a German woman, a blonde named "Irene" that Tamawaki made over into a Japanese woman complete with a new name and dyed hair. Ine is the second wife because Shinako, the first wife, is dead—except that Matsuzaki keeps seeing her around.
Also, there are magic, soul-bearing cherries, Ine's dark hair turning blonde only under moonlight, jump cuts, bizarre leaps in continuity, and other examples of dream logic.
The second film in Suzuki's "Taisho Trilogy", three unrelated films set in Taisho-era Japan, preceded by Zigeunerweisen and followed by Yumeji.
Tropes:
- Answer Cut: Matsuzaki tells Tamawaki of meeting the strange woman. He asks "Did you ever see her again?" Cut to the next scene, where Matsuzaki runs into Shinako again on the steps of a train station.
- Boy Meets Ghoul: It's hard to say with certainty given the hallucinatory nature of the film, but one thing that may be happening is that Matsuzaki is having an affair with the ghost of his patron's first wife.
- Call-Back: At one point Matsuzaki gets a look at the sketchbook Shinako has been drawing in, and discovers that in fact she has only been drawing circles, squares, and triangles. The film ends with him looking at the camera and saying "In death, I shall be known as square, circle, circle, triangle."
- Driven to Suicide: Shinako, after vowing to die after what Tamawaki did to her, drowns herself in a laundry basket. Or at least she seems to.
- Erotic Eating: Shinako gives her soul to Matsuzaki by producing a cherry out of her mouth, very erotically, with the cherry on the tip of her tongue.
- The Flapper: One scene that is very odd but at least appropriate to the time setting has Tamawaki and Matsuzaki going to a nightclub, featuring a chorus line of Japanese flappers, complete with '20s bob haircuts, dancing the Charleston.
- Foreshadowing: Tamawaki does some tricks with flipping a fan around that look like something a geisha would do. Later it's revealed that he likes to dress up as a geisha and dance.
- Geisha: A whole group of geisha dance for Matsuzaki. He enjoys it less after finding out the one geisha is actually Tamawaki, in drag.
- Jump Cut: Jump cuts are used over, and over, and over again, throughout the film, to reinforce the sense of unreality and surrealism. Matsuzaki will be talking to Shinako, and then she will appear far away on the other side of a courtyard.
- Lap Pillow: In one quiet scene Mio, a geisha who is Tamawaki's kept woman. He is paying her to be Matsuzaki's caretaker, and in one scene they are talking quietly as he rests with her head on his lap.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Matsuzaki objects to the ludicrous kabuki play that is telling the story of the movie, Tamawaki laughs and says "Who talks of realism in here?" This, of course, is an apt description of Kagero-za, a movie that never bothers with realism at any point.
- Letting Her Hair Down: Shinako feels compelled to wash her hair after the creepy old lady touches it. She proceeds to unpin it and let it down before washing it in a public fountain. Matsuzaki is very obviously turned on.
- Stop Trick: The oldest special effect in the movies, used to make things just a little weirder. Matsuzaki and Tamawaki are waiting for the doctor to tell them about Ine. The doctor suddenly materializes, out of nowhere, to tell Tamawaki that his wife has died.
- Surrealism: Even more so than Zigeunerweisen, this film casts logic and narrative aside in favor of atmosphere and imagery that evokes nothing more than a very long dream.
- Ine, or the ghost of Ine, is supposed to be a German woman that her husband made up to look Japanese. When she is in moonlight, and only when she is in moonlight, her natural blonde hair and blue eyes are revealed.
- In one scene Tamawaki and Matsuzaki are dining in the former's home when Matsuzaki rises and asks for the restroom. Tamawaki nods to the butler, who rises to show Matsuzaki the way. There is clearly a third person slumped in the corner, behind and partially hidden by the butler. Why is that third person there? Who knows?
- Things were weird and surreal before, but they get very strange indeed towards the end. Matsuzaki, Tamawaki, and Shinako wander into a kabuki house with a troupe of children, who are playing out the story of Kagero-za, the very movie they are in.
- Thematic Series: The second of three Mind Screw movies set in Taisho-era Japan, filled with dream logic, surrealism, jealousy, and sexual obsession.
- Trash the Set: Shinako, playing herself in the kabuki story, says that she will kill herself. She leaves the stage, which then completely falls apart, for no apparent reason.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Matsuzaki is displeased when the one geisha in the middle of the dance lowers "her" fan and is revealed to be Tamawaki, still with his mustache.
