“ゼッタイニ、ユルサナイ”
舞台の「真四谷怪談」でお岩役を演じるスター女優、美雪の強い推薦で、恋人である俳優の浩介が伊右衛門役に抜擢される。さらに、美雪と旧知の鈴木と新進女優の莉緒がキャスティングされ、舞台稽古がスタートする。稽古が進む中、美雪のおかげで大役をつかんだはずの浩介は共演者の莉緒に手を出してしまう。やがて、愛する浩介に裏切られた美雪の情念が稽古中のお岩の情念と融合し、次第に現実と舞台の境がなくなっていく。
興行収入: $1,164,010 (2億円)
※製作費・興行収入はTMDBのデータを参照しています。収支は(興行収入 - 製作費)で算出したFindKey独自の推定値であり、広告宣伝費や諸経費は含まれません (1ドル=150円換算)。
監督: 三池崇史
脚本: 山岸きくみ
音楽: 遠藤浩二
撮影監督: 北信康
制作会社: Celluloid Dreams / Sedic International / Kinoshita Group / Kôsuke / Shanghai Pengjin Entertainment Co. / Toei Company / dentsu / OLM / Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs
I don't know much about theatre in Japan, but I associate this movie to be similar to the the little Noh I have seen, even though the stage play in center of the narrative is based on the play "Yotsuya Kaidan" from the later period of Kabuki theatre. Kuime takes you on a mesmerizing journey of two, if not three or more, parallel narratives where the on stage facilitates the backstage drama. The pacing is very restrained and timing for accents is crucial. Aesthetically it is very pleasing and has an interesting exposed re-use of the movie sets similar to the actors doing multiple roles and their stories being intertwined. Finally the horror elements are creeping and lead up to several gruesome conclusions. That said, I can see why it did not attract a western audience, as the pacing may be too slow for a western horror audience and the multilayered narrative is more common in the festival circuit. Personally I find that after the one and half hours of elegant theater, the twenty minutes or so finale was a bit crude and could have been worked through better. Still, I found myself very attentive throughout the movie, got affected by the horrific crescendos and maintained an interest for the artistic aspects as well. In conclusion, I'd consider it one of the better movies I have seen by Takashi Miike.
