Review: Warm Water Under a Red Bridge

Imamura Shôhei’s film is a delirious ode to the female orgasm.

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
Photo: Film Movement

For Imamura Shôhei, the color red has become a starling indicator of passage between states of duress. In 1997’s The Eel, a light inexplicably turns red and signals death, and, now, in Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, a delirious ode to the female orgasm, a beet-red bridge comes to signify the gateway between sexual repression and freedom.

Unemployed Yosuke (Yakusho Kôji) watches Saeko (Shimizu Misa) sneak a piece of cheese into her purse at a local supermarket as water accumulates around her feet. She drops a dolphin-shaped earring into the puddle and leaves the store. Yosuke, recently divorced from his nagging wife, returns the trinket but becomes addicted to Saeko’s sexual river. Her flow is the film’s comic center and is inextricably linked to Imamura’s notions of sexual shame and trust.

Saeko’s grandmother, Mitsu (Baishô Mitsuko), is a byproduct of passion cut short: Her ex-lover, Taro (Kitamura Kazuo), shamed by his former criminal ways, abandoned the old woman and now lies dead somewhere in the town’s homeless sector. The senile Mitsu, still longing for Taro’s return, lulls herself to sleep by writing fortune letters for others (Yosuke’s portends good luck).

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Just as Saeko’s pent-up orgasmic fluid must eventually break loose, the old woman’s pressure-cooker emotions threaten to explode. Saeko is both shamed and liberated by her sexual power. When full, she can feel her inner water all the way up to her throat. “I have to do something wicked,” she says, channeling her sexual energy through shoplifting. And just as The Eel’s male and female protagonists were delicately linked by acts of murder and attempted suicide, Yosuke’s impending divorce and Saeko’s familial loss are inextricably bound to sexual longing.

Saeko, still haunted by memories of her mother’s drowning, has turned a watery death into a pent-up emotional river. Not only is Saeko’s orgasm daringly celebrated but it seemingly brings nature to life. And her release is legendary: It is a river’s source and nutrient center, and to the glee of local fisherman, fish accumulate in the river whenever Saeko releases her flow.

Yosuke, now a town fisherman, is called to shore by the in-heat Saeko, who uses the glare of a mirror to attract the man’s attention. With the demand of performance comes the inevitable: Yosuke’s flacid penis and Saeko’s drought. Just as Yosuke begins to believe that sex with Saeko is making him loose his facial glow, Saeko comes to believe that the slow deterioration of her river suggests she may be having an affair. Warm Water Under a Red Bridge is a great film about addiction that’s mindful of the expectations society places on men and women.

Score: 
 Cast: Yakusho Kôji, Shimizu Misa, Baishô Mitsuko, Fuwa Mansaku, Natsuyagi Isao, Kitamura Yukiya, Kitamura Kazuo  Director: Imamura Shôhei  Screenwriter: Imamura Shôhei  Distributor: Cowboy Pictures  Running Time: 119 min  Rating: NR  Year: 2001  Buy: Video

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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