雪の断章 情熱
Videot (1)
Arvostelut (1)
Variously released under the English titles Stepchildren and Lost Chapter of Snow: Passion, this film is often praised in Sōmai’s filmography for its opening 14-minute one-shot sequence. In this tremendously difficult dolly shot, the entire life story of the central poor orphan girl is told in a stylised studio set. Unfortunately, the rest of the film, though also formalistically impressive, is a bizarre paedophilic melodrama that comes across as a cheesy soap-operatic version of the exploitation fantasy Perfect Education. In the worst case, the film can be seen as a reactionary response of the Tóhó studio, or rather of Marumi Sasaki, the author of the popular book on which the film is based, to the emancipation of women and their abandonment of traditional roles and models of behaviour. Thus, the underage protagonist is no Lolita, an active temptress who seduced men, but rather a supporting character who behaves that way and comes to an appropriately tragic end. Conversely, the protagonist represents the absurdly passive ideal of the traditional woman, devoid of any personality, whose existence is entirely shaped by men and is endlessly subordinate to them. Like all Japanese Lolitas, she comes across as a tabula rasa who is confused by the world around her and terrified by the idea of setting out on her own, which of course means she needs to take care of the men around her. The film’s mainstream narrative understandably celebrates pure love without physical desire, which – though it is present beneath the surface – is not supposed to be fulfilled because it is vulgar, after all. Taking a more lenient view, Lost Chapter of Snow: Passion is a colourful melodrama about an adopted girl who, as her seventeenth birthday approaches, is confronted with having to step out of her adoptive father’s kind-hearted home and into a bitter and cynical world. On the other hand, in line with the unrealistic nature of the premise, Sōmai lets his characteristic one-shots accentuate the unnaturalness and almost Brechtian detachment of the scenes. He stylises them to the point of being kitschy with lyrical and thus artificial vignettes, and even frames the entire film as puppet theatre.
()