Review of Branded to Kill (1967) by Adam H — 19 Oct 2018

That was one stylish and weird yakuza flick! I suppose a lot of aspects of the movie are kind of absurdist. Couldn't tell if the obsession with and clarity of yakuza rankings was one of these absurdisms or if it has some resonance I'm missing. Metaphor for competitiveness in general, something yakuza-specific, or a spoof on the conventions of yakuza movies of the day?

CW: rape:

There is a scene in which Joe rapes Annu, the femme fatale, which was disturbing. I read a few interpretations of the movie, which seem to be taking it something like this: she wants to be killed, he assents to killing her, she then puts her head back as if to say, swoon, ravish me. Of course then he can't bring himself to kill her, and she eventually falls in love with him enough that she passively accepts being tortured by #1 (and associates?) who are using her to get at him. As far as I can tell, the rape scene is the moment when she goes from being a badass with a death drive *and* a playful love of sexy attempted murder games to a totally passive, loyal woman who would do anything for her man. (And if getting tortured and killed is part of the deal, sign her up -- well that part is consistent with her character early in the film, but it seems to me that the early character would have given as good as she got and tortured the torturers along the way.) I'm not trying to kink-shame, as in other respects the kinky and death-sex aspects of this movie are interesting and well done. But rape (or passive assent to an unpleasurable act under what turn out to be false pretenses) as the act from which selfless love springs ... ugh to that.

Still, an interesting film, stylishly shot, that explores some intense issues while not getting too full of itself or weighted down. There's a playfulness and a meta-filmic quality to some of this.