The Enchantment

Nagasaki's assured teaser produces several surprises. As it begins, with Tokyo shrink Dr Sotomura being visited by Miyako, a beautiful young woman claiming to suffer beatings from her flatmate (who may be a lesbian lover), the film looks set to be an intelligent if faintly formulary psychodrama on the theme of sexual jealousy. Within minutes, however, another patient is discovered dead with a knife in his back, and as the good doctor becomes increasingly besotted with Miyako, the film shifts into moody femme fatale territory. So far, so intriguing, but by the film's end Nagasaki has repeatedly pulled the rug from under our feet, so that our assumptions, like Sotomura's, are shaken by a truly subversive conclusion. This seductively cunning movie, whose preposterous twists contain a provocative questioning of traditional ideas on sex, sanity and masculine authority, should appeal not only to feminists of every hue, but to anyone looking for crisp visuals, subtle suspense and inventive direction.