Yumeji is a 1991 film from Japan directed by Seijun Suzuki.
It is a biopic of Japanese poet and painter Yumeji Takehisa
—sort of. Actually it's much weirder than that. The setting is sometime in the 1920s. Yumeji, poet and artist, wants to marry a girl named Hikono. However, Hikono is both tubercular and closely watched by her parents, so Yumeji leaves town. He leaves for an inn in the country, where he hopes to rendezvous with Hikono. However, while there, he starts to take a fancy to a widow named Tomoyo. Tomoyo has a complicated history of her own. Her husband, Wakiya, cheated on her with another woman. The other woman's husband, Matsukichi, killed Wakiya, and has fled into the mountains where the police are hunting him.
Also, Wakiya may not be dead.
All of the above is presented in a film filled with bizarre, hallucinatory imagery. This is the last film in Suzuki's "Taisho trilogy", three films set during Japan's Taisho era (1912-1926), proceeded by Zigeunerweisen and Kagero-za.
Tropes:
- Delicate and Sickly: Hikono, who has tuberculosis and is often weak and feverish. This makes it harder for her to escape her household and rendezvous with Yumeji.
- Driven to Suicide: Matsukichi fails to kill Wakiya—for the second time, anyway, since earlier he was believed to have killed him and thrown his body into the lake. In any case, with Wakiya apparently still alive, Matsukichi can't bear the shame of having failed to kill him. So Matsukichi hangs himself.
- Fanservice Extra: After taking a bath in a bathhouse, Yumeji sees a very attractive naked woman toweling off. He asks, and is told that yes, the naked lady is a geisha.
- Furo Scene: One random scene has Hikono and her maid, both topless in a bathtub, as the latter is pouring water to wash the former off.
- Impairment Shot: One scene has Tomoyo taking Yumeji to a nightclub, blindfolded. She spins him around before removing the blindfold. The unfocused spinning camera suggests his dizziness and disorientation.
- Incurable Cough of Death: Subverted, in that Hikono was explicitly stated early in the film to be suffering from tuberculosis. Still, however, she's shown near the end coughing into a napkin, possibly indicating that her days are growing short.
- Love Triangle: More than one! Yumeji wants his sickly girlfriend Hikono, but also is attracted to the beautiful widow Tomoyo. Tomoyo's husband Wakiya was for his part cheating with another woman, only for the other woman's husband, Matsukichi or "Demon Matsu" to kill Wakiya. Maybe.
- Mononymous Biopic Title: Sort of. The film is called Yumeji and there was a real guy, an artist named Yumeji Takehisa, who was active during the Taisho era. However, outside of his name, the fact that he was an artist, and a couple of minor facts like how he was once tried for treason and acquitted, there is little in the film that corresponds to the life of the real Yumeji Takehisa.
- Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date: A surreal scene in which Tomoyo is crossing the lake in a rowboat, looking for her husband's corpse, only to be shocked by Yumeji popping out of the water. What follows kind of looks like an old-fashioned rowboat date, except for the fact that Yumeji is still in the water, swimming along behind with his hand on the rowboat.
- One-Woman Wail: The opening credits consist of still photos of scenery of the Taisho era, accompanied by the ghostly wail of a woman vocalizing. The woman's ghostly wail is heard again at the end.
- The Rival: Gyoshu Inamura, a painter who pops up in the second half of the film and is explicitly described as a rival of Yumeji's. Among other things, he would like to paint the same women that Yumeji is painting.
- Surrealism: Although not quite as dream-like as Zigeunerweisen or Kagero-za, this film is still filled with bizarre, hallucinatory imagery.
- In one scene, Mr. Wakiya is talking with Hikono, when he suddenly chokes and spits up an earring. Why? Who knows?
- Another scene, a flashback said to happen on a rainy day, portrays rain by showing streaks of blue paint, painted on the screen.
- An even stranger scene shows women peeling large daikon radishes, only for a very human leg to appear, whereupon the woman shave the leg. The next shot shows the owner of the leg, a cheerful prostitute named Oyo who is Yumeji's lover, in a giant pot, apparently being cooked as a stew. (Sand of course she's shown alive several times later.)
- A completely random scene towards the end has Yumeji meeting several people who are, somehow, all him at different stages of his life.
- Thematic Series: Three films made by Seijun Suzuki set in Taisho-era Japan. All three films deal with Love Triangles, sexual obsession, jealousy, and adultery. All three feature bizarre, dream-like imagery, and a non-linear plot.
- White Stallion: A beautiful white horse is roaming about in the woods on the mountain, because apparently beautiful white horses do that. This allows Matsukichi to jump on the horse and ride it into Wakiya's picnic, so he can kill Wakiya.
