"'I think that what remains in our memory is not ‘construction’ but
‘destruction.’ Making things is not what counts. The power that destroys
them is." - Seijun Suzuki
'Greatest prostitute movie' isn’t a
superlative I see often enough. There’s definitely enough contenders between Nights of Cabira , La Chienne, The Naked Kiss
and Vivre sa vie and
I have another to offer up today ,Gate
of Flesh by Seijun Suzuki. Suzuki’s film follows around group of prostitutes in
post war Tokyo where business has become so cut throat the women develop a code
to keep each other in line. The girls hold sway over the territory, force any
lone ladies out and punish their own if any of them ‘give it away for free’. The ladies code makes them just as ruthless as
the Yakuza characters Suzuki became so use to, but the code takes an emotional
level here that elevates it above almost all his other work. The enemy of the
ladies group becomes anything resembling real passion. This contradiction
underscores much of the film particularly with women’s sense of belonging; the
ladies all manipulate their usual territory with ease but at the same time have no real home. Suzuki nails down this alienation in his mis en scene where he
avoids traditional coverage of the girls dwellings and upon protagonist, Maya’s
arrival, and Suzuki favors low angles placing her in a pit she won’t be
crawling out of. At this point the description probably sounds like one of
those socially conscious movies that gets nominated for Oscars. But that’s only
because I haven’t mentioned that this socially conscious film looks like a
piece of pop art and is edited like a musical. One of the most surreal
sequences is how excited the entire community gets over the visiting American
G.I.s particularly the prostitutes who rush out to grab as many men as
possible. What’s surreal is how playful certain lurid moments are, like the image of
two teens laughing under a van that starts shaking it as the women service
their clients. The market place has a great day too as the prostitutes’ wolf
down their food to keep their stamina up.
When a man shows up, the ladies find themselves torn over his
affections and the violence that develops between them begins to echo the war itself. (One of Suzuki’s most ballsy choices is to intercut footage of
bombings when one of the girls consummates her affections). Many of Suzuki’s symbols are blunt but
the movie was marketed to be softcore porn (‘pink films’ are what they called em in Japan at the time) so
Suzuki takes a unsubtle approach that’s synonymous with porn and turns it into
a powerful modernist gesture. Suzuki takes bold images like the American flag or
a crucifix and puts them in a compromising context, it’s blunt elements like this that leave some opposed to Suzuki. But Gate of Flesh is
special because these images that are foreboding at the start of the film
become symbols of corruption that the characters actually end up embracing. There’s another dramatic instance of Suzuki
embracing a really blunt cliché for a jarring affect. In what I guess is the
film’s most famous sequence Maya is punished for her indiscretions but her
punishment scene is oddly the most erotic scene in the film. Suzuki could
easily be lumped in with directors trying to shock but a scene like this
elevates him to the level of an artist, Suzuki confronts his audience with the
eroticism of violence. I understand this sounds like bullshit academia but when
you see how the scene is film Suzuki does so in a way that you can’t look away,
few filmmakers are this honest their amorality
and fetishizing violence. The best marriage of terms that can be used to
describe Suzuki’s work is 'playful nihilism', there’s plenty of Suzuki films that
are great but the playfulness overwhelms the nihilism (I’m looking at you, Tokyo Drifter)
but here no number of Stanley Donen inspired set pieces can take away from the
feelings of hopelessness.
The film is available in six parts on youtube.
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