Released to celebrate the 300th role of iconic Japanese actor Kazuo Hasegawa, An Actor's Revenge (Yukinojo Henge) is a superbly eclectic offering from director Kon Ichikawa (The Harp of Burma), as surreal as it is stylized and mesmerizing cinema.Hasegawa plays the double-role of Yukinojo Nakamura - a kabuki actor who (like Hasegawa himself) is renowned for being an onnagata, or female impersonat'or - as well as the dashing thief Yamitaro, who likes to behaves a bit like, well, Robin Hood.'
When Yukinojo chances across the three men who drove his parents to suicide decades earlier, he sets in motion a plan for revenge worthy of Shakespeare; what he discovers he can't control are the ulterior ramifications of this revenge-play, as his actions shatter innocent lives.
It's difficult to overcome the fact that lead man Hasegawa was pushing 55 here; while he was reprising a role he played before (in 1935), he's obviously too old to push the sensuality angle of the onnagata, yet still somehow tweaks it on several levels.
For his part director Ishikawa doesn't even try to suspend disbelief. Into this high drama he winds liberal doses of comedy, kabuki-style sets and visuals that are stretched out within a pop art context, and some innovative sword-fighting moments that border on the dream-like.
Realism this most certainly is not, and that's the film's beauty.
Adding to the spice in An Actor's Revenge is a modern jazz soundtrack, while the acting chops are ably supported by Shintaro Katsu (of Zatoichi fame) and the stunning Ayako Wakao, who previously shone as Eiko in Kenji Mizoguchi's The Geisha (1953), and is devastating here.
While not Ishikawa's grandest achievement, it's still a hypnagogic gem well worth the viewing, and the cool cats at Madman Entertainment in Australia made it available to the domestic market there for the first time in 2010 - which is how I picked up the DVD.
Madman have been doing some magnificent things, not only helping to establish a foothold Downunder for pioneers of Japanese movie-making like Ichikawa, Akira Kurosawa, Seijun Suzuki, and their ilk, but creating inroads for contemporary anime. In fact Madman has held well over 95% of the local market of things Japanese for over a decade.
So, being a fellow Aussie, not to mention also from Melbourne, I felt it was high time we had a chat about these particular things. I ended up talking with Christian Were (the product manager of Madman's Eastern Eye/Asylum offshoots) and Sylvester Ip (product manager for Anime). For simplicity's sake in the following Q&A, let's mark them down as CW and SI.
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