Paradise View

Takamine's first theatrical feature was a pioneering attempt to confront the Japanese public with the fact of Okinawa's cultural difference from Japan. Reishu (yakuza movie star Kobayashi) quits a job on a US military base; while mulling over his future he catches snakes, sticks numbers on ants and gets village girl Nabi (pop star Togawa) pregnant. But then he is 'hidden by God' (= mislays his mabui or soul) and in this enfeebled condition is savaged by a wild rainbow pig. The film is as laidback and idiosyncratic as its misfit characters. Instead of melodrama it strings its plot-lines on eccentric detail, part-invented folklore, psychedelic digressions and creative modifications to Okinawa's indigenous fauna and flora. Shot almost entirely in Okinawan dialect, it's a languid tropical fantasy with concealed political teeth.