A Snake of June

Part of the special series NACHTBLENDE

Nachtblende: CREEPY PEEKS

A different kind of ménage à trois: Japanese underground director Shinya Tsukamoto (TETSUO) spins a web of relationships held together by violence by setting a stalker on a married couple. A fever dream in cold blue, a provocation to the Japanese bourgeoisie and a challenging feast for the eyes of the cinema audience.

Rinko (Asuka Kurosawa) is being blackmailed by a stranger: If she doesn't do as he says, he will publish photos of her masturbating. The stalker (played by Tsukamoto himself) forces her to engage in humiliating behaviour in public and exerts a massive influence on Rinko's dormant marriage...

The disturbing and provocative element of A SNAKE OF JUNE is the liberation that the protagonist experiences through the assaults of a violent offender. This enables her to escape her oppressive married life, at least for a while. This is not an unfamiliar theme in Japanese films, if you think of films such as GUILTY OF ROMANCE by Sion Sono.

However, escaping the socially standardised patriarchy through the dark, deviant and dangerous back alleys of the same society usually doesn't work very well. In Tsukamoto's symbolic one-way streets, however, we are driven to absolute madness anyway: Associations with his cult film TETSUO are justified towards the end at the latest.