Warm Water Under A Red Bridge

Misa Shimizu and Kōji Yakusho

Shohei Imamura's Warm Water Under A Red Bridge, his final feature film from 2001, is an odd and affecting comedy that, on the surface, seems unrepresentative of the director's work. Kōji Yakusho  (Shall We Dance, Perfect Days) plays Yosuke, a down at his heels salesman dealing with unemployment and a broken marriage. Through flashbacks, sprinkled throughout the film, we get glimpses of Yosuke's relationship with Taro, a homeless senior with a philosophical bent. Just before he dies, Taro tells Yosuke of a valuable golden Buddha that he has secreted in a house in an obscure town on the Noto Peninsula beside the Sea of Japan. The broke Yosuke goes in search of the object, but the quest he embarks on will uncover something more valuable than treasure.

The house with the valuable Buddha is occupied by the proprietress of a small candy store and her grandmother. Yosuke first encounters the woman named Saeko (played by Misa Shimizu who appeared with Yakusho in Imamura's The Eel) at the grocery store where she shoplifts some cheese and leaves behind a large puddle that has seemingly emanated from her nether regions. Fascinated, Yosuke soon becomes intimate with Saeko and learns her secret. Warm water wells up inside the woman which she must release in a gush, preferably through coitus. Soon the two are having at it with gushes of water inundating them and the sites of their trysts. Yosuke joins a local fishing crew, finding his place in life with Saeko, the true treasure.

The film's attempts at belly laughs earn a guffaw or two, but Saeko's repeated ejaculations seem mechanical after the initial deluge. Similarly, comic seasickness, tossed buckets of bilge water, and senility gags fall flat. However, if the film is not funny enough to elicit chortles, it is certainly funny in the peculiar sense. Here, as in all his later films, there is a greater warmth and humanism than Imamura displayed as a young tyro. His direction of his supporting cast emphasizes individual vignettes and communal activity and it breathes life into a gentle comedy that tiptoes precariously on the edge of twee. Over a dozen characters register as more than types, greatly enhancing the feel of a small seaside community. I especially enjoyed Mitsuko Baishô's demented Granny. The scripts addresses environmental issues, the toxic legacy of a cadmium plant is interjected somewhat clumsily and the lead duo visit a particle collider in the film's most transcendent sequence. The message is as clear as spring water: we are not only part of the environment, but it is part and particle of ourselves. Respect must be paid.

Despite the warm glow serenity of this fable, which ends with a rainbow, the Marxist satire of an early film like Pigs and Battleships is still in evidence. The character of Taro is a virtual stand-in for the director and he offers a critique of the capitalistic treadmill of success that Yosuke is on along with other philosophical asides. Taro obtained the gold Buddha amidst the turmoil of post-war Japan. Imamura depicted the black market that existed after the war in Pigs and Battleships and admitted to a little side hustling himself. Warm Water... has its flaws, I didn't find Ms. Shimizu to be enough of a force of nature, but it is an assured and personal statement, warts and all.