A Snake of June

Shot in monochrome but printed on colour stock through blue filters, Tsukamoto's paean to phone sex is his most intensely erotic movie yet. Telephone counsellor Rinko Tatsumi (Kurosawa, last seen an age ago in the wretched About Love, Tokyo) is harassed by a voice stalker (Tsukamoto, who else?) who turns out to have photos of her masturbating, taken furtively through her bedroom window. Half-embarrassed, half-excited, she begins complying with the stranger's demands that she perform assorted auto-erotic acts for his pleasure, first at home, then on the streets. By the time her chubby, obsessively anal husband (Kotari) is contacted by the stalker, things are seriously out of control. Admitting to inspiration from Tsai Ming-Liang's Vive l'amour, Tsukamoto sets out to reinvent the erotics of impersonal city life, using pervasive water imagery to drench the movie in lubricious stirrings of lust. Just this side of sleazy sexploitation, this is Tsukamoto's most exquisite fleur du mal.