The film follows the life of Sada Abe, who became a celebrity in 1936 after strangling her lover and slicing off his penis.
Direction
Obayashi's psychedelic formalism makes incestuous murder look like a pop art explosion.
Acting
Hitomi Kuroki's feral, operatic descent into erotic madness.
Cinematography
Gaudy reds and floating camera work that refuses to let you look away.
Director
Nobuhiko Obayashi
Hitomi Kuroki
Sada Abe
Tsurutaro Kataoka
Tatsuzo Kikumoto
Norihei Miki
Takuzo Abe
Kippei Shiina
Masaru Okada
Toshie Negishi
Yoshi Kikumoto
Renji Ishibashi
Shinkichi
Bengal
Sanosuke Tachibana
Kyūsaku Shimada
Takiguchi
Tomorowo Taguchi
Kin
Mansaku Ikeuchi
Toshihiko Saito
Ayumi Ito
Maid
Yasufumi Hayashi
Young Soldier
Wakaba Irie
Toki
Kōen Okumura
Tofu Shop
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The real 1936 Sada Abe incident caused a media frenzy that temporarily sold out Tokyo's knife shops. Her trial testimony was so explicit that censors burned the original court records.
Obayashi shot this between his 1950s experimental shorts and the later 'Hanagatami'—it's his perverse bridge between underground provocation and mainstream respectability.
JP
