MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Rampo’: Writer Caught in His Own Web

Kazuyoshi Okuyama’s “The Mystery of Rampo” is a supremely elegant and sensuous romantic fantasy that imagines prolific mystery writer Edogawa Rampo (1894-1965) becoming involved in one of his own stories.

A box-office champ in Japan, it fittingly marks the centennial of Shochiku Co. Ltd., proprietor of the renowned Grand Kabuki and one of the oldest, most distinguished film studios in the world. “Rampo” has much of the swirling style, lush decor and costumes and extravagant emotions of “Farinelli.”

Everything about the film is bravura, including Akira Senju’s heady, mood-setting score with its mournful waltz theme. After an opening montage of prewar newsreels, we meet briefly Edogawa Rampo (Naoto Takenaka)--his name is a phonetic homage to his hero Edgar Allan Poe--just before his latest novel unfolds for us in a quaint animated sequence.

A seemingly demure housewife finds her semi-invalid husband inside her hope chest while she’s playing a game of hide-and-seek with their children--and instead of helping him out, locks him in to suffocate to death.

Japan is at the brink of World War II, and the government censor not surprisingly bans this novel, which is hardly in the militaristic spirit of the times. Rampo then reluctantly attends the reception for a movie based on one of his novels at the magnificent Art Deco-style Hotel New Grand. Fleeing the crowds, he experiences the apparition of a beautiful woman in black in a deserted reception area of the hotel.

Life then begins to imitate art as he learns of a woman believed to have deliberately suffocated her husband in the same way his heroine did. Rampo soon seeks out this woman (Michiko Hada, the gorgeous “face” for Shiseido Cosmetics)--and she looks exactly like the woman in black.

Rather than deal with the real-life woman, who may or may not be guilty of murder, Rampo imagines her becoming the woman in black, the mistress of an extravagantly decadent marquis (Mikijiro Hira) who lives in an immense Beaux Arts palace perched on a cliff overlooking a suitably stormy sea. The beauty longs for escape; Rampo has his handsome perennial hero, private detective Kogoro Akechi (Masahiro Motoki), attempt her rescue.

At times darkly humorous and boldly Freudian in its symbolism, “Rampo” is implicitly a comment on a society careening toward chaos, but on a more personal level is unsettlingly expressive of a man’s fear of a woman whose purported drastic behavior could be an extreme response to her frustrated craving for love and support.

Everything about the film is impeccable, from its perfectly modulated performances to its glorious cinematography (by Yoshihisa Nakagawa) to the smallest prop.

Amazingly, veteran producer/co-writer Okuyama took over the directorial reins from Rintaro Mayuzumi and proceeded, in his directorial debut, to guide some 60% of the film--amazing because “The Mystery of Rampo” is such a risky, ambitious undertaking and yet seems all of a piece.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: The film includes some violence, some kinky sex, and in style and theme too adult and complex for preteens.

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‘The Mystery of Rampo’ Naoto Takenaka: Edogawa Rampo Michiko Hada: Shizuko/Marquis’ mistress Masahiro Motoki: Kogoro Akechi Mikijiro Hira: Marquis Ogawara A Samuel Goldwyn Co. and Team Okuyama presentation of a Shochiku/Rampo Project production. Executive producer/director Kazuyoshi Okuyama. Producer Yoshihisa Nakagawa. Screenplay by Okuyama and Yuhei Enoki. Cinematographer Yasushi Sasakihara. Editor Akimasa Kawashima. Costumes Sachico Ito. Music Akira Senju. Art director Kyoko Heya. Set decorator Masahiro Furuya. In Japanese, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 39 minutes.

* In exclusive release at the NuWilshire, 1314 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 394-8099, and the United Artists Del Amo 6, 91A Del Amo Fashion Square Mall, Torrance. (310) 542-7383.