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A Snake of June Director: Shinya Tsukamoto Number of Items: 1 Format: Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Running Time: 77 minutes Studio: Tartan Video Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2005-02-22 Buy from Amazon

Customer Reviews: Total numer of reviews: 5 Average rating: 3.0 "finding the true self" Short-haired, bespectacled Rinko works at a suicide prevention hotline talking with individuals who have given up on life, but who are seeking help in order to find a reason why to keep on living. One day a pornographer calls her, and through her advice decides to keep on living. However, instead of just giving her his thanks, the man becomes completely obsessed with her, taking numerous pictures of Rinko during her most private moments. One day Rinko receives an envelope with the caption "Your Husband's Secret" which contains photographs of Rinko masturbating. Soon after being shocked by the photos, Rinko receives a phone call from the pornographer. Refusing to listen to his demands, Rinko tries to ignore the man, but envelopes of pictures continue to arrive in the mail, including a set which depicts Rinko, making herself a very short dress and putting on make up. Two things that her neat freak, middle-aged husband, Shigehiko, would never aprove of. Determined to get back the pictures, Rinko listens to the pornographer's demands: to go out in public in her mini-skirt and purchase a dildo. This of course is just the beginning of the film. The viewer gains a good glimpse of the personalities of both Rinko and Shigehiko through the prying eye of the pornographer. The film is completely in black and white which makes the film seedier. There are some really surreal scenes, and a few surprises. "arresting" At one point in A Snake of June, the victim of an acute case of blackmailing laments to her harasser that he is torturing her "because you want to make fun of one last person before you die". This statement could well be directed towards director Shinya Tsukamoto, who must secretly take gleeful pleasure in his audience's befuddlement. From the creator of Tetsuo: The Iron Man comes another mind-boggling, unwatchably nerve-racking sanity test that is bound to push the boundaries of what is acceptable to the very limits. In an eternally rain-drenched Tokyo, Rinko (Asuka Kurosawa) is a demurely cropped-haired working woman in her early thirties who makes a living as a telephone counsellor whose praiseworthy record of success should give her enough reasons to be satisfied with life in general. But her domestic life is a completely different set of affairs and, as one of her callers mockingly observes, it seemed somehow ironic that a counsellor who helps people find cause for living should be unable to find one of her own. Rinko is married to Shigehiko (Yuji Koutari), an overweight salaryman who politely gives little regard to his wife, but much to the cleanliness of their apartment. Their platonically estranged marriage might have gone on in perpetuity --- until death does them apart --- had it not been for the arrival of a mysterious envelope addressed to Rinko, bearing the title `Your Husband's Secrets'. Inside it she finds, to her total shock, a series of photographs of her masturbating. Unfortunate Rinko is duly phoned by the sender of the envelope, who turns out to be one of her callers, a once-suicidal photographer by the name of Iguchi (Shinya Tsukamoto himself) who has now found a new reason to continue living, thanks to the help of Rinko. Now, he believes, it is time to repay the debt, by helping her enact her private fantasies. In order to motivate her, he has resorted to blackmail. In order to acquire all of the negatives, Rinko submits to Iguchi, and so begins her descent into the risky world of carnal pleasure and depravity. The stakes get continually raised, as Rinko is forced to visit the local shopping arcade wearing an excessively short miniskirt sans panties; to buying groceries prescribed by the caller (which consisted of bananas, cucumbers, and eggplants) with a vibrator buzzing within her. The movie's first of three parts ends on a somewhat satisfactory note with Rinko finally being rewarded, but, as is always the case, there's a hitch: Iguchi still has one final negative left. Thus finishes the first act and what follows are the last two acts of the film; acts that travel to new levels of unbearable lurid intensity until the film culminates in a final mind-numbing assault on the senses that will surely leave many viewers stunned and gasping for breath. Tsukamoto's refrainment from employing repulsive scenes of visceral terror and revolting explicitness that has become characteristic of his previous works proves that he has made great strides towards maturity as a filmmaker. Indeed, the highlight ofA Snake of June is the director's decision to channel the dreadfully noxious uneasiness that permeates throughout the entire movie through (sometimes ineffable) symbolism and a well placed - if overly so - emphasis on atmosphere. Take, for example, the incessant apparitions of water in all of its forms - from the sweat-filled faces to rain spattered windows to currents racing down drainage pipes as a recurring motif symbolising sexuality and the irresistible urges of suppressed desire. Which is why Tsukamoto, whose works have been favourably compared to Lynch and Cronenberg, can be forgiven for indulging in a little of his usual obsessions with physical deformations and biomechanical imagery, which becomes blatantly apparent in one fantasy sequence where phallic-shaped tentacles come sprouting out of a character's torso. This is no exploitive flick either. Apart from the one scene where Rinko bares all in a moment of orgasmic ecstasy, little flesh is shown; instead, much of the focus is on the character's facial expressions and emotions; explicitly disturbing in their own inexplainable way. What Tsukamoto has created here is a thought provoking meditation not only on compulsive voyeurism, but also on the daily sexual frustrations and emotional alienation typically encountered in dysfunctional family units that is fast becoming a prevalent feature of today's rigid urban society. Stunningly filmed in arctic blue-tinted monochrome that effectively augments the literal dampness of scenes in conveying the film's prevailing mood of aqueous trepidation and nascent sexual consciousness,A Snake of June is Tsukamoto's may be Tsukamoto at his most ethereally complex, and at his most translucently palpable - captivatingly accessible and at the same time abhorrently repulsive. "surreal but not real surreal" I do not know if this director is related to Akira or not since the last name is same but the movie is very mediocore - but I was used to watching Passolini so this cannotr really hold my attention - Rinko , the primary charaster has tried her best but direction fails her - photography could have been so much better considering this is black and white only. The scope of work is so much more in black and white frames - "Tsukamoto can do better. Much better." I like Shinya Tsukamoto. He's a great director (TOKYO FIST), a talented actor (ICHI THE KILLER) and an imaginative writer (TETSUO), but I didn't care for A SNAKE OF JUNE. It starts out alright with a repressed wife being blackmailed to act out her own sexual fantasies - example: walking around in public in a miniskirt with an active sex toy inside her. That part was interesting, but then it starts going on about her lame husband and I lost interest quick. Nowhere near sexy enough or surreal enough to recommend. "Not as strong as it should have been" One of the great things about A Snake of June is the use of the blue lens/filter through which this black and white film was shot. As the cinematographer explains in one of the two excellent extra featurettes that come with the DVD, the blue was used to give the feeling of water. June is the rainy month in Japan and just like in the film Seven, it rains throughout the entire film. The combination of the blue tint/tinge, the rain, and the growing eroticism should have resulted in a building of intensity, which did take place in Tsukamoto (the director)'s films Iron Man and Body Hammer. But the problem in A Snake of June is that once a certain degree of intensity is reached, there is not much more that can be done. So the film, while not floundering, does not really leave the viewer satisfied, so to speak, once about the midpoint has come and gone. Even though Rinko, the female protagonist, does become sexier past that midpoint mark, the intensity that is piled on--among other things, using a surreal peep show that kind of bursts into view out of the blue (so to speak)--does not really add anything. In fact, the peep show and the appearance of an appendage that definitely recalls Iron Man seem much more forced and tacked on here than similar events do in either Iron Man or Body Hammer (the Iron Man sequel). Tsukamoto himself has a leading role in this film; he's the stalker that galvanizes the action, the catalyst that transforms Rinko from a shy social worker into a walking object of pleasure. Her husband sleeps on a couch, typically, and this for a woman can be frustrating, just like it would for a man if his wife did the same thing. It would have been a much better film if there had been a stronger emphasis on Rinko's psychology. In Iron Man and Body Hammer, there was no need to focus on these internal elements because the external ones of flesh becoming metal were so bizarre that there was no need for an internal focus. But in A Snake of June, Tsukamoto turns his intent and attention inward, or tries to, but he doesn't go far enough. This should have been a much better film that it is.