‘Strange Tale’ Opens Japan Today Festival Friday

The richly varied, seven-day Japan Today Festival opens Friday at 7 p.m. at the Monica 4-Plex with its strongest offering, Kaneto Shindo’s wise and poignant “The Strange Tale of Oyuki,” based on an autobiographical novel and the diaries of noted writer Kafu Nagai.

Masahiko Tsugawa stars as Nagai, an unapologetic sybarite who at 58 for the first time falls in love--with a lovely young prostitute Oyuki (Yuki Sumida), who beguiles him with her refreshing lack of artificial coquetry and returns his passion. That their romance takes place as World War II rages on gives it added resonance and meaning.

One of eight films to be screened at the festival, “The Strange Tale of Oyuki,” repeating Sunday at 4:45 p.m., may well be the 80-year-old Shindo’s masterpiece, a highly sensual and equally contemplative work from a frequently overrated, overly didactic director.

In addition to those of the stars there are wonderful performances from two great veteran actresses, Nobuko Otowa as Oyuki’s understanding madam and Haruko Sugimura as Nagai’s sophisticated mother, more amused than disturbed by her son’s Don Juan-like existence.

A decidedly different kind of love story, Takashi Ishii’s “Original Sin,” follows at 9:30 p.m. Based on a novel by Bo Nishimura, which in turn was based on an actual incident, this taut, dynamic film noir plunges us swiftly into a virtual maelstrom of emotion.

An intense young man (Masatoshi Nagase, who played the Elvis fan in Jim Jarmusch’s “Mystery Train”) encounters a pretty young woman (Shinobu Ohtake), becomes obsessed with her to the extent of wangling a job at her husband’s real estate office and subsequently all but rapes her. The wife, who finds herself responding to him, discovers that she can deal with being in love with two men, but neither of the men, both proud and passionate types, seems remotely capable of rationally squaring away the eternal triangle. This very stylish film becomes a comment on what happens to conventional people when overcome by grand passion.

Takeshi Kitano’s “A Scene at Sea” (Saturday at 2 p.m.) is yet another love story, a tender, lyrical tale of a deaf couple (Kurodo Maki, Hiroko Oshima) who are as captivated with surfing as they are with each other; it will be followed at 4:30 with “Pineapple Tours,” Tsutomu Makiya’s trilogy of comic stories of modern-day Okinawa.

Kenchi Iwamoto’s “Kikuchi” will screen Saturday at 9:45 p.m., following a 7:15 p.m. repeat of “Original Sin.” A demanding but highly impressive minimalist work, it depicts the monotonous existence of a young laundry worker (Jiro Yoshimura) in modern-day Tokyo. The city takes on the aspect of a giant machine--the near-wordless film makes striking use of natural sounds, deliberately made louder--in which the worker is the tiniest possible cog. Tension builds as we begin to wonder whether the worker will accept his intensely alienated fate or will in some way rebel against it, declaring his humanity, perhaps recklessly.

All of the films are 1992 productions except for Nobuhiko Obayashi’s “Beijing Watermelon” (Sunday at 2 p.m.), which in 1990 was the final attraction at the much-missed Little Tokyo Cinema that year.

It’s a quirky, original and unpredictable account of a grocer whose compulsive generosity to needy Chinese students finally calls upon us to consider the limits of friendship and goodwill--and then abruptly evolves into one of the most surprising and powerful implicit commentaries imaginable on the Tian An Men Square massacre.

Another socially conscious drama, Hirotaka Tashiro’s “Swimming With Tears” (Sunday at 7:15 p.m.) deals with the plight of those children born of affairs between Japanese men and Philippine women, and thus illuminates the cruelties of both Japan’s chronic xenophobia and arranged marriages.

Assembled by Regan Kibbee of the sponsoring Japan America Society of Southern California, the Japan Today Film Festival also includes the recently released “Okoge” (screening Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. and Wednesday at 7 p.m.), a terrific contemporary story of a young woman and her friendship with a gay couple.

For full weekday schedule and further information: (310) 394-9741.