Labyrinth of Dreams (1997)

 

Director: Gakuryû "Sogo" Ishii

Screenplay: Gakuryû "Sogo" Ishii

Cast: Tadanobu Asano as Tatsuo Niitaka; Kotomi Kyôno as Chieko Yamashita; Tomoka Kurotani as Tsuyako Tukikawa; Kirina Mano as Aiko; Reiko Matsuo as Mineko Matsuura; Kyûsaku Shimada as Kuro-Tonbi no kyaku; Takeshi Ikeda as Tsuwaomote

An Abstract Candidate

 

The change Sogo Ishii made, the trajectory, to becoming Gakuryû Ishii means more and more when you start to see the films made during the decades from the transition. Slowly, but surely, his work is being made available, but even in little pieces, you can suddenly see an abrupt transition from Burst City (1982), his punk dystopian film with abrasive editing and a punk soundtrack, and how alien it is by the time you get to Labyrinth of Dreams, a sombre period based drama set in yet its own dream world. Yet the transformation is compelling for an auteur that clearly evolved, realising after his initial films he wanted to step in other directions and managed to succeed fully. Ishii found, here as with Angel Dust (1994), a drastic change in direction, building from the eighties, that lead to him finding his own distinct eeriness which he constructed for these films.

Labyrinth of Dreams is set in the past, a comparison apt to another Japanese film hard to see appropriate, that being Mikio Naruse's Hideko, the Bus Conductor (1941). A quiet drama, set in the era it was made into the forties, both films tackle the concept of the "bus girls” (basu gâru), of a tradition from between the early 1920s to the mid-1960s when buses would have only a driver, male in both films, and a female bus girl to assist him¹. In Hideko..., it is a lighter drama where a duo attempt to salvage their bus service, in danger of being lost in a rural town with their boss more interested in money, by adding a tourist side of explaining the historical locations of their routes for the bus conductor Okoma, played by Hideko Takamine, so popular her name rather than her character's gets the film title billing. Labyrinth of Dreams, clearly set in the thirties to forties, is a much ominous narrative where a mysterious male bus driver has been seducing the bus girls he has worked with, only for him to, like an unmarried Bluebeard, dispose of them in faked bus accidents. For Tomiko (Rena Komine), working at one company and still dealing with the death of someone dear to her was a victim, she believes her company's new hire Tatsuo (Tadanobu Asano) is that man. Tatsuo immediately tries to get close to her, with Tomiko deliberately trying to stay her distance as much to catch him. His aura however proves a wear-and-tear which may seal her fate, drawn to him more with the danger itself part of the aura.

The premise is one, even in its historically specific context, that you could adapt in any aesthetic, a romantic thriller in premise which you could sell easily, but Gakuryû Ishii makes a film from material that is unconventional but not from any deliberately aesthetic choice. Beyond the fact, as a late nineties films, he made the film in black-and-white this film takes it time to draw you in. Like Angel Dust, Ishii manages the mercurial trick of taking these premises, slowing them down to an eerie and intense mood which crawls under the skin. This is different to that film because it is almost timeless despite its clear history context. You see this as a time with Western influences and modernity influencing the rural town setting, Tatsuo introduces himself on his first day with Western sweets for the female co-workers and Western cigars for the male ones, but with the bus travelling through the countryside, including isolated environments, stillness can be felt throughout.

Until later on it is entirely a gently paced drama, taking its time until only when Tomiko starts to fall for Tatsuo to change, falling into his trap as the film around her drifts to being more dreamlike without the need for surrealism or unconventional editing techniques. The acting helps considerably, alongside being a poignant reminder, virtually ageless, of how Tadanobu Asano became one of my favorite actors, instantly the cool actor of cult Japanese cinema for many by the 2000s, but someone who always picked great roles, always did great performances even in ultraviolent work like Ichi the Killer (2001). That the film is also reliant on a very idiosyncratic aspect too, as the deaths are caused by staged bus accidents, adding the one perverse side of the drama. One of the bus girls' main jobs in this world, as for Tomiko, is to step outside the bus and help the drivers be aware of crossing rural train lines when no trains are moving nearby. Used to considerable effect in the climax, a film sweltering in dreamy unease, the resulting film in its glacial tone is compelling.

Abstract Spectrum: Dreamlike/Eerie

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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1) This information barely details the "bus girl" with any knowledge. Yet the knowledge of the likes of Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan, a 2013 non-fiction text by Alisa Freedman, Laura Miller and Christine Yano exists out there for people like me to desperately want to read on subjects like this.