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| Images courtesy of Arrow Video |
Arrow Video have been gradually working through curating and
publishing the filmography of Yasuzo Masumura, director of Blind Beast, Red
Angel, Irezumi and Afraid to Die. Their latest pickup and release of the
director’s extensive oeuvre comes in the form of a little-seen pinku-eiga
sexploitation crime drama Play it Cool which sees Japanese singer Mari
Atsumi in the leading role of a college girl hastily navigating her way through
Tokyo’s male dominated nightclub culture.
At once a mixture of Roman Porno, yakuza yarn, geisha study and portrait
of strained female agency touched upon in such fare as The Shape of Night,
the film makes it’s English language blu-ray disc premiere via Arrow Video in a
new special edition featuring an audio commentary moderated by Jasper Sharp and
Anne McKnight as well as a video essay on the film and Masumura by Mark
Roberts.
Yumi (Mari Atsumi) is a young college fashion student residing
with her alcoholic geisha mother Tomi (Akemi Negishi) and ineffectual
stepfather Ryoichi. While Tomi is
working as a hostess in a local bar, Ryoichi sexually assaults Yumi and when
the news reaches Tomi she retaliates by murdering Ryoichi. Landed in jail, Yumi is left to forage on her
own as she unwillingly inherits her mother’s former place of employment as a
geisha, being kicked and pushed around by leering men wanting to manhandle her
before crumpling her up and throwing her out.
Solace seems to finally come in the form of a former lawyer Nozawa
(Yusuke Kawazu) who rescues her from a violent thuggish gangster and introduces
her to a ritzier classier world.
However, it too has its own subset of dangers and pitfalls threatening
to swallow her whole again as she awaits her mother Tomi’s impending release
from prison.
Hip and cool for how it depicts a geisha’s daughter falling
into a deep dark pit and her subsequent digging of herself out of the mire, Play
it Cool is a wildly entertaining journey of a strong and resourceful
heroine navigating worlds which treat their women like disposable
playthings. Co-written by Yoshihiro
Ishimatsu, Masayuki Toyama and Masumura himself, the ensemble piece featuring
legends like Akira Kurosawa regular Ko Nishimura, Yusuke Kawazu and Sei
Hiraizumi. Essentially boiled down to
two principal characters Yumi played brilliantly and fearlessly by singer Mari
Atsumi and her mother Tomi played by Akemi Negishi, the film is an unusual
cocktail of geisha endurance and yakuza yarn wrapped together as social study
of women fraught between worlds where they’re taken advantage of.
Featuring a rousing score by Lucky Dragon No. 5 composer
Hikaru Hayashi and expressive scope widescreen 2.35:1 cinematography by Fires
on the Plain cameraman Setsuo Kobayashi, Play it Cool while more
modestly sized and pictured than say Blind Beast which was a
phantasmagorical piece from top to bottom nevertheless finds its own unique
footing as a mid-sized pinku-eiga/yakuza-geisha tale anchored by Mari Atsumi
who is at once vulnerable, alluring and eventually cold and stern as she gains
further control of her situation. Masumura
has tended in his work towards portraying tough female characters navigating largely
male dominated social ladders and Play it Cool is no exception.
One of three features directed by Masumura in the year of
1970, the other two being Yakuza Masterpiece and The Hot Little Girl,
Play it Cool kind of comes in under the radar compared to some of Masumura’s
other more striking works. Still, as a
mixture of pinku-eiga and action crime drama the film is unique and Masumura’s
heroines are always thrilling to watch take on male adversaries. The Arrow Video release is solid and while
the film is something of a quickie in the director’s filmography it nevertheless
leaves an impression like a sting that won’t stop ringing with pain. Masumura would eventually make a foray into
Japanese television in the late 1970s into the 1980s but at the beginning of
the decade he was churning out confrontational portraits of men and women
locked in some form of mortal combat, either falling in and out of love or
racing each other to death. Play it
Cool will never come close to the outlandish horrors of Blind Beast or
the satirical wit of Giants and Toys but it’ll still pack a punch.
--Andrew Kotwicki
