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MovieMail's Review
After making The Realm of the Senses, Oshima continued his exploration of the violence of overwhelming passion with Empire of Passion. In the film, two lovers decide that they must kill Gesaburo, the woman's husband, as the man cannot bear the thought of him making love to her. The deed done, he is thrown into a well. After a period of calm however, Gesaburo begins to appear in person and in people's dreams, provoking crisis between the lovers.
Sharing similar themes to Realm of the Senses as well as the same male lead, Empire of Passion is actually an atmospheric ghost story with recurring visual themes of water, wheels and mists, and a sparse and subtle musical accompaniment provided by Toru Takemitsu (responsible, among many other films, for the striking soundscapes of Teshigahara's Pitfall). In its atmosphere of measured exposition punctuated by moments of visual shock, it is a recent ancestor of the new generation of Japanese horror exemplified by Hideo Nakata’s Ring.
Sur le Tournage: 2003 Interview programme featuring production consultant Koji Wakamatsu and assistant directors Yusuke Narita and Yoichi Sai
Panel discussion at Birkbeck College with Japanese film scholars
Booklet.
Film Description
Made while the director, Nagisa Oshima, was being prosecuted for the publication of the script to his previous film, the controversial In the Realm of the Senses, companion piece Empire of Passion won the Best Director Prize for Oshima at the Cannes film festival in 1978.
Sensual, heady and visually rich, the film is set in Japan in 1895, where a soldier conspires with his lover to murder her elderly husband. Three years later his ghost appears, but the threat of discovery rekindles the murderers' illicit passion.
