The
Maedas believe the family that schemes together, stays together. They are a
lazy and rapacious bunch of deadbeats, embezzlers, and con artists, but they
will meet their match when they cross paths with an even more manipulative seductress
in Yuzo Kawashima’s Elegant Beast, which screens as
part of Yuzo Kawashima x Ayako Wakao,
the Japan Society’s series of newly 4K-restored Kawashima films, starring the
great Wakao.
Rather
than working a real job, Tokizo and Yoshino Maeda had their daughter Tomoko
seduce the famous novelist Shuntaro Yoshizawa, from whom they immediately
started borrowing money from, with no intention of ever paying him back. Thanks
to Yoshizawa’s recommendation, their son Minoru landed a job with talent agent
Ichiro Katori, whom he immediately started embezzling from. Fortunately, Katori’s
books are so “irregular,” there is little chance he will go to the authorities.
However, the Maedas are shocked and appalled to learn Minoru turned over at
least half his skimmings to Yukie Mitani, Katori’s bookkeeper.
It
seems Minoru is not the only one who has been redirecting funds her way.
Katori, his outside account, and even the tax collector have fallen for her
charms. One by one, they will all make their way to the Maeda flat (purchased
by Yoshizawa to be his love nest with Tomoko, but appropriated by her parents),
hoping to win back either Mitani or some of the cash they ill-advisedly
bestowed on her.
Where
has this film been all our lives? You will be hard pressed to find a more
acidic and cutting social satire than Elegant
Beast (a.k.a. Graceful Brute).
The screenplay penned by auteur Kaneto Shindo is irrepressibly sly and unremittingly
dark. Neither he nor Kawashima or Wakao take any prisoners in their skewering
of the striving upwardly mobile post-war generation. Kawashima also keeps it
lively despite the potential staginess of the single setting, through the
inventive use of off-kilter camera angles and farcical traffic direction worthy
of the Marx Brothers.
Wow,
is Wakao ever something as Mitani. She ought to rank as one of the top ten
femme fatales of all time, but Elegant Beast
and most of Kawashima’s work in general is bafflingly under-screened outside of
Japan. Likewise, Yunosuke Ito and Hisano Yamaoka make quite the picaresque pair
as the unrepentant Maeda parents.
Elegant has all kinds of
sharp edges, but it also has considerable visual flair, so it should be a real cinematic
treat to see it on the big screen, in its pristinely restored glory. The Maedas
are truly a nest of vipers, but they certainly are fun to spend time with. Very
highly recommended, Elegant Beast screens
this Saturday (12/2) and Sunday (12/3) at the Japan Society, as part of the Yuzo Kawashima x Ayako Wakao mini-retrospective.