The Worst Film Ever

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This reminds me of my discovery with Tetsuo, ten years ago, of a cinema out there. Tetsuo for me at the time was like listening for the first time to bands like Throbbing Gristle or SPK. The term 'industrial' wasn't just a commercial label, it communicated something fundamental of the fabric it was made of, not of style but of the sound itself (in Tetsuo's case, the image). It was enough to simply experience it, interpretations seemed superfluous.Snake of June is a similar experience for the body, in the sense that the ideas explored pale in comparison to the exploration itself. Whatever it's a portrait of, of sexual or personal liberation from the self, it's the portrait that matters to me.The grimy aesthetic pulsing with grain and noise, the fluid camera exploring dark recesses of an urban dystopia of constant downpour, the sudden bursts of fetishized sex, all these orient and provide contrast and context to what is explored. It's not enough to see these personal demons overcomed by the female protagonist, the boundaries of mundane existence broken apart, it counts to experience how they reflect.A view of the mind is permitted here through a camera obscura, dancing on the walls of the mind we see demented projections. The emerging view is not clear, but like the best of surreal cinema, kaleidoskopic. We may piece something together of the image we see, but that's hardly the point for me. I point a kaleidoskope to something to experience the phantasmagoria of the fracture, Snake of June works likewise. The portrait we get is not a lifelike depiction, but an expressionist one.This may be linked to horror cinema due to Tsukamoto's credentials, but it's really New Wave in the best tradition of directors like Susumu Hani and Toshio Matsumoto.

Decided to let this age several weeks before commenting, to see what had etched itself most firmly in memory. Now I'm dismayed to discover its Rinko's vibrator promenade. Not from prurient interest, I hope. Rather, that sequence more effectively than any other, with its documentary-like shots of shopkeepers, shoppers, and passersby, situates Rinko, her violator, and her husband and all this film's public and private happenings in the real world, in our world. I think Hitchcock, though he'd never have dared, would have understood what Tsukamoto's up to in the vibrator sequence. Consider Scottie in Vertigo hiding both his vertigo and his obsession. Consider Hitchcock's use of grand public places for his climaxes. Bresson's The Pickpocket may also fit here. With even more perspective of memory, I think I detect a similar undertone of embarrassment before society in both Tetsuo films, each time the transformed Tetsuo hits the street. There's something like it too, in the transformation scenes in Cronenberg's The Fly or Shainberg's Secretary. But I don't mean the negativism these last two comparisons might imply.Anyway, for a startlingly normal take on director Tsukamoto as actor, see him as a professional chess player's harried salaryman husband in the 2002 A Woman's Work (aka Travail).

Having read the review of Chris-123, I almost skipped this movie expecting something like "Monster" or "Irreversible". None of his references rang a bell so, hopefully, they give a better they give a better impression of Snake of June. Fortunately, my curiosity took over and I went ahead seeing the movie... It crackles with tension -between and within each of the three Characters. Although much of this tension is based on unfulfilled sexual desires, it does not go beyond showing flesh as in most current Hollywood mass productions. Neither did I find it repulsive or threatening. You will get involved with this movie, with the portrayed characters, with the acting, the scenes and, indeed, the rain. Although the blackmailing at start seems to be very humiliating and inhumane, it seems to fix the marriage of the victim in the end. Drastic means, no doubt but on a far lower scale than what I had expected.Go ahead, watch it. It will make you think.

When I learned the A Snake of June was made by the director of Tetsuo, I almost turned it off. I'm glad I didn't because Snake is a lot more interesting and somewhat more comprehensible - but that is only relative. The story starts off reasonably straightforwardly, following phone-counsellor Rinko at work and at home with her unresponsive husband Shigehiko. For the first half it is an exciting erotic thriller, complete with blackmailer.The introduction of cancer - a transformation of the flesh echoing the techno transformations of Tetsuo - leads into new territory. The focus shifts from Rinko to Shigehiko after one of the most erotic scenes in mainstream cinema. And then it lost me. There are some sado-masochistic similarities to Cronenberg's 'Crash' with its three-way interactions. The scenes between husband and blackmailer are increasingly surrealistic. They may be dreams or fantasies: if not some scenes are comically preposterous. But however incomprehensible the film becomes it is made so well that attention never flags. The urban setting in rainy season Japan is filmed in a blue-tinged monochrome, and the constant rain is used with great effect as a significant 'player' in the film. In hindsight, well worth watching, even though I suspect that the sub-titles do not do justice to the film's complexities.