Excellent but underrated film

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

I feel like I have to add a comment to this film, because I believe that it has been misunderstood, just as Eyes Wide Shut may have been misunderstood. In fact, it is not a coincidence that I bring up the name of Kubrick's last film: both are similar in themes, and share a strangely similar style.When I first heard of this, my thoughts were: it was either a failure, or people were repulsed by the peculiar and taboo theme of female ejaculation (a very real phenomenon, I assure you, though it was exaggerated here). When I finished watching, I was slightly puzzled, but also concluded that my second hunch was probably correct. Nonetheless, this happens to be the most different film made by Imamura, so one can expect for it to have its lot of skeptics; people were disappointed. Interestingly, Kubrick seems to have drawn very similar conclusions in Eyes Wide Shut, which became his obituary: the couple decide to leave things be, to forget about the odd things that had happened, and just get a healthy relationship working again. The film is about sex. Warm Water is also about sex. Imamura's conclusion did have an extra element though: a wise old bugger who happened to be decidedly insightful about the matters of the nature of man -- Taro. The character brings an intriguing, though not altogether novel, take on society, which is in effect a synthesis of much of what Imamura has previously expressed in his films. I believe that Taro is Imamura.

Imamura does here what Neil Jordan does in Crying Game; he takes two seemingly incongruous elements, fetishistic sexual obsession and contemporary socio-political malaise, and weaves them effortlessly together. Imamura's rigorously geometric framing contrasts with the feathery- light content of the tale. Having said that, there are some gritty moments here; a drowning born of insanity is rendered in stark black-and-white, and the social plight of Japan's cast-aside middle-aged salarymen is emblematically captured in Yakusho's performance. However, at heart this is a fun movie that surprises and delights. It is all about the mise-en-scene, perfectly delivered each time by Imamura and the principles. The film does flag at the end; it felt like they opted to go for melodrama purely because the allotted time was running out. The previous two acts make up for that third-act missed beat. One gripe is that the edition I bought had no Extras apart from the theatrical trailer. I would have liked a Making Of to confirm my suspicion that this film was as much fun to make as it is to watch. It must have been murder for cast and crew to keep a straight face during those venting scenes...

"Warm Water...." begins with a woman in a market shoplifting while water gushes from between her legs and puddles around her feet - an intriguing opening for this meager Japanese comedy about a woman who sprays water like a fountain when having sex. Imamura seems to have painted himself into a corner as this curious story becomes only less and less interesting as time runs out with a less than apocalyptic conclusion. Nonetheless, there are some humorous moments along the way though most will not find the journey worth the time. For devotees of Japanese cinema only. (B-)

A movie from 75 year old director Shohei Imamura. First observation - it's definitely not the steamy sex-romp that the Hong Kong DVD case might have you believe. Far from it in fact. It's quite a gentle, very quirky somewhat philosophical character driven romance.A man in his fourties loses his job when the company he works for goes bankrupt. In Japan, with the tradition of 'employment for life', this is not a hard situation to be in - especially with an estranged wife and child nagging for money. On something like a whim he travels to a small village to follow the directions of a friend that just passed away, who told him of a treasure that he left behind 40 years ago, in a house by a red bridge. When he arrives, he meets the woman that now lives in the house and through rather unusual circumstances ends up in bed with her. The woman has a strange secret, a source of shame - and the source of the 'Warm Water' under the Red Bridge. The two embark on a peculiar relationship, and when the man gets a temporary job on a fishing boat he begins to blend in and adapt to the small village way of life.The movie is a slightly surreal meditation on life and love, and what is really of value in each of them. The message is an encouragement of individuality and independence of thought, an affirmation that 'strange' and 'different' are words closer to 'good' than 'bad'. The characters are all a little bit tragic, beaten down by life, but in their own community they find that life can be beaten back.It's a slow paced movie, quite touching and gently funny. It's mostly character & dialogue driven, and both are well developed. I believe it's based on a novel, which usually does imply good character and dialogue if the director has enough skill to adapt a written work to a visual one. After nearly 50 years in the business, Imamura clearly has that skill.