Pale Flower, a review by Antares
Pale Flower (1964)
3.5/5 - Highly stylized in its presentation,
Pale Flower is a hybrid noir/gangster film from the heyday of Japanese cinema. The characters share a detached sense of coolness which leaves them underdeveloped and for the most part, kind of uninteresting. Now don't get me wrong, I liked the film, but then again, I love almost all Japanese films from this time period, but there really isn't much to the story. You have a ronin type Yakuza who has just been released from prison for killing a rival gang member, and he returns to his former life style, but seems to want to go in a different direction. Not knowing anything other than that kind of life, he just melds back into it with a sense of personal destiny. He then meets an attractive young female gambler, who throws caution to the wind in everything she does, and his life gets a jump start. Unfortunately, it is here where the story kind of fizzles out. Maybe the director should have shorn away a few scenes of the couple gambling, and added a little more of them together out in the real world as it is here that the film scores repeatedly. There's a scene of the two racing another car on a highway, and you get a sense of why they both are attracted to each other. They both live for danger, and she doesn't really understand what kind of man she is with, but that's because the director doesn't flesh out either character. This is only my second Yakuza film, and I hope that further adventures into this genre yield riper fruit. It's an interesting film to look at, but atmosphere, cinematography and a great soundtrack aren't a complete package.
(From Antares' Short Summations on February 15th, 2012)
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May 14, 2024, 11:45:29 PM
