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).
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).