Kabuki plays were an important source of material for early Japanese filmmakers, conferring prestige and popularity on their fledgling medium. In recent decades, directors have added kabuki-esque touches to their films (Seijun Suzuki being the best known), and kabuki actors have performed their famous roles for the camera (as Bando Tamasaburo did for Daniel Schmid's 1995 docu-drama "The Written Face"), but contemporary films set in or around the kabuki world are rare indeed.
Yukiko Takayama, a veteran film and TV scriptwriter who made her directorial debut with the 1995 costume drama "Kaze ni Katami (After the Wind Has Gone)," penetrates that world more thoroughly than I would have thought possible in "Musume Dojoji -- Jaen no Koi (Musume Dojoji -- Love of the Snake Demon)." But it's more for kabuki fans, particularly the women sitting in the pricier seats, than the rest of us. Though set in present-day Tokyo, the story is melodrama in the typical kabuki manner, filmed with the costumes, makeup and staging on close, well-lit display, the way it might look from the fifth row.
In kabuki, the plots, which are often taken from old tales of star-crossed romance or the Edo equivalent of police-blotter news, matter less than performance and presentation, which a film can only convey imperfectly. The camera may give us a closer view of the resplendent kimono, but it also reveals, without the softening effects of lighting and distance, that the maiden wearing them is a middle-aged man.
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