Bumpkin Soup [A.K.A. The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girl]
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Written by Kiyoshi Kurosawa & Kunitoshi Manda
Starring Yoriko Dôguchi, Usagi Asô, Jûzô Itami
Unrated
Runtime: 80 minutes

The Crazy Family
Directed by Sôgo Ishii
Written by Sôgo Ishii, Norio Kaminami, Yoshinori Kobayashi
Starring Katsuya Kobayashi, Mitsuko Baisho, Youki Kudoh
Unrated
Runtime: 106 minutes
Both films screening via Japan Society

by Clayton Hayes, Staff Writer

Director’s Company x2 is Japan Society’s double-feature homage to the pioneering independent production company that operated in Japan for a decade, from 1982 to 1992, featuring films by celebrated directors Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Sôgo Ishii. “Direkan,” as it was commonly known, was key in providing a platform for young filmmakers and for those looking to transition out of the fading erotic films industry. The efforts of Director’s Company were led by Kazuhiko Hasegawa, himself a former writer and AD for Nikkatsu when it was producing erotic films in the 1970s.

Bumpkin Soup

Which transitions nicely to Kurosawa’s contribution to this double-bill, his 1985 feature Bumpkin Soup (aka The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girl). The film began its life as a Nikkatsu “pink film” and stars then-popular model Yoriko Dôguchi as the titular bumpkin. Nikkatsu reportedly wasn’t satisfied with the film, deeming it too strange to release (more on that later), and it was shelved until Kurosawa decided to buy back the rights. He then reworked the film, re-shooting scenes and having it re-edited in order to present it as a standalone feature.

I’m not sure I’d call the reworking a success, though, and it’s not hard to understand why Bumpkin Soup is “seldom-screened” (per Japan Society’s promotional materials for the film). Obviously, attempting to transmute one film into another is a significant hurdle, but the end result feels like a tepid attempt at emulating the energy of French New Wave films of the 1960s. I’d be very curious to hear about the original Nikkatsu version of the film because, unless it was substantially different from the theatrical version, I’d guess it was a sort of softcore porn in the style of Jean-Luc Godard. It’s a wildly ambitious goal, and would’ve been quite an experience if Kurosawa had succeeded in his efforts.

I spent a lot of the runtime trying to put my finger on why it wasn’t working and, aside from the film’s production history (plenty of erotic content remains in the film), two possible causes leapt out at me. First, the Bumpkin Soup tries to focus on far more characters than it can handle. The lack of traditional plot that was so prominent in the French New Wave was usually offset by a relatively small cast, often three or fewer primary characters. Having only two or three characters to focus on helps support the experimentation in form and rapid shifts in tone, location, or subject. Possibly due to a desire for multiple pairings in the original erotic film, Bumpkin shifts away from Dôguchi’s character too often, instead having a sort of ensemble feel that just doesn’t work.

The second issue that came to mind, and one that I’m less able to articulate, is that Bumpkin feels weighed down with social commentary that has taken precedence over the film itself. The two are of course compatible; many prominent examples of the French New Wave carried social and/or political messaging. But Kurosawa’s film seems very wrapped up in existing as social commentary first and film second. Actors monologue to camera, silent groups of students hold up signs with social messages about sex, desire, and romance, and the film ends with a truly bizarre sequence in which almost the entire cast is (bloodlessly) shot to death to the sound of firecrackers.

The story behind Bumpkin Soup is far more interesting than the film itself, but at 80 minutes it is at least a quick watch. It’s the sort of film I’d recommend as a curiosity more than anything else, and it doesn’t hurt that Kurosawa is an excellent filmmaker whose back catalog is worth examining. If you’re looking for a Japanese film influenced by the French New Wave, though, I’d recommend Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1966 short EMOTION.

The Crazy Family

Sôgo Ishii’s 1984 film The Crazy Family is far more my speed, and it was the lure of the Burst City director’s film that drew me to this double-feature. Though if someone had told me his would be the more formally conventional of the two films I’d have been surprised. 1982’s punk-post-apocalyptic Burst City is anarchic in both form and content, while his next feature, 1984’s The Crazy Family, brings much the same spirit to the Japanese suburbs of the 1980s. It’s actually a familiar setup, with an archetypal family moving out of the city now that father Katsukuni Kobayashi (played by the nearly identically named Katsuya Kobayashi) has scaled the corporate ladder high enough to afford a house.

What follows is a total dismemberment of the “suburban dream” that is both hugely gratifying for someone that has spent long years in the suburban U.S. (i.e., me) and extremely entertaining. Ishii here pulls off one of my favorite magic tricks in cinema: after the first two acts I had absolutely no idea where the plot could go next. I’m not sure that this is intentional, I think it’s a matter of a film that is very effective at drawing me into its (admittedly unconventional) plot. I became so enamored with Crazy Family that I couldn’t help but just exist with it in the moment as I watched it.

All of the principal cast are great, but Kobayashi’s performance as a sort of protoplasmic Japanese salaryman is so transcendent that I can’t believe this is the first film of his I’ve seen. Through much of the film he holds his face in a perfectly bland, empty expression that invites viewers’ eyes to slide past him. But, when called upon, his features warp and contort into expressions that defy belief. And the extreme physicality of his performance isn’t just from the neck up; one of the film’s most memorable sequences is a series of tracking shots following Kobayashi as he (literally) sprints all the way from his office in the city to his suburban home, including an incredible long take of him running through a crowded subway train.

Thematically speaking, I was surprised how often I found myself thinking of Michael Haneke’s controversial 1989 film The Seventh Continent while watching Crazy Family. I don’t think this is a spoiler for either film as they approach it in very different ways, but both films are exploring the inherent emptiness of suburban life as a goal unto itself. Both are unavoidably haunted by the looming specter of WWII-era imperialism, though Ishii’s film chooses to confront this much more explicitly than does Haneke’s. (The character) Kobayashi’s father (Hitoshi Ueki), who spends much of the first act shoveling societal expectations onto his son, is a direct link to WWII-era Japan (as becomes evident in the third act when things really start to go wild).

There is an extremely uncomfortable reference to the widespread sexual violence committed by Japanese troops in China, but this felt more like Ishii confronting the papering over those atrocities and not something introduced purely for shock value. The truth can be very uncomfortable sometimes! And reckoning with your nation’s complicity in indiscriminate violence against civilians feels like a pretty timely theme writing this, as I am, in the United States in early 2024. I digress, though, as that isn’t all that central to Crazy Family. Regardless, Ishii’s film was an absolute delight to watch and I’d jump at the chance to see it on the big screen.