Double Suicide

Shinoda's interesting film is a generally faithful adaptation of a play by Chikamatsu, preserving all the theatrical conventions of the puppet theatre original, and even trumping that level of artifice with bizarre devices of his own: eccentric framing, ultra-formal compositions, and a very stylised use of black-and-white. The trouble is that the very simple plot (a married man's fateful love for a courtesan) sometimes gets lost amid all the stylistic bustle: the formal beauty comes dangerously close to sheer formalism, and the 'fantastic' elements risk degenerating into Fellini-esque excess.