You don’t essentially must be a fan of Japanese manga grasp Yoshiharu Tsuge to understand Lust within the Rain, a sprawling World Warfare II-era fantasy tailored from an autobiographical assortment first printed within the early Nineteen Eighties. However it actually helps.

Everywhere in the map when it comes to tone, content material and style, director Shinzo Katayama’s bold interval piece strives to breed the surreal sexual ambiance of Tsuge’s wartime recollections, which shift from motion to comedy to eroticism in a single swoop. Not for everybody’s style, and maybe finest suited to native audiences, the movie is extra admirable for its swing-for-the-fences course than for its exhausting plot twists.

Katayama minimize his chops as an assistant director for Bong Joon-ho earlier than making two options, together with the well-received 2021 serial killer flick, Lacking. However whereas he channels an power and magnificence much like the Korean maestro, Katayama lacks Bong’s cutthroat precision and depraved humorousness.

Clocking in at over two hours, Lust within the Rain overstays its welcome throughout an preliminary 80 minutes the place nothing completely is smart, earlier than honing in on extra substantial themes in a last hour that leaps between a number of different realities — to the purpose we by no means fairly know what’s actual or not.

At first, Katayama tosses us right into a weird love triangle between an aspiring manga artist, Yoshio (Ryo Narita, Your Identify); an older novelist, Imori (Go Morita); and a neighborhood femme fatale, Fukuko (Eriko Nakamura, August in Tokyo), who might or not have murdered her personal husband. The time setting is unclear, as is the setting itself: The three reside in a distant village referred to as North City, which is separated by border guards from one other place referred to as South City.

The timid Yoshio, who serves as a relatively unreliable narrator, is beset by sexual fantasies he transforms into panels for his comedian books. These embody a scene on the very begin — and from which the movie takes its title — the place he slyly coerces a younger lady into undressing throughout a torrential downpour, then proceeds to rape her within the mud. (A rape, it must be added, that transforms into passionate intercourse.)

In actual life, Yoshio is infatuated with Fukuko, who strikes into his cramped house together with the equally shady Imori. The 2 make loud love whereas Yoshio lies within the subsequent room, creating much more sexual rigidity between the trio. It seems like one of many males might wind up killing the opposite. Or else like they might all comply with type a contented throuple. It’s exhausting to inform.

Issues get weirder from there, though they barely fall into place as properly. With out spoiling an excessive amount of (the higher elements are within the second half) we understand that every one we’ve been seeing really includes Japan’s occupation of northern China throughout WWII, together with massacres inflicted on the civilian inhabitants. All of a sudden, Yoshio’s fantasies tackle an altogether totally different sheen — they appear much less the ravings of lustful artist than of a soldier traumatized by nonstop bloodshed.

It’s an excessive amount of and maybe too late. Katayama by no means fairly sustains our curiosity whereas oscillating between coming-of-age needs, gory atrocities, and erotic surrealism. A first-rate instance of this can be a sequence that has Yoshio following the thriller lady from his goals down a number of darkish alleyways, till he witnesses her getting violently struck by a automotive. He finds her physique mendacity lifeless in a rice paddy, then prepares to defile it together with his finger.

Once more, that is an acquired style — one which’s most likely finest suited to lovers of Tsuge’s watakushi manga (a type of literary autobiography particular to Japan), the place the writer offers free reign to reminiscence, creativeness and his omnipotent libido. Katayama works extra time to translate Tsuge’s obsessions to the display screen, using a grandiose model for the battle scenes and a smooth intimacy to all of the intercourse, whether or not actual or fantasized.  

The would-be romance on the coronary heart of Lust within the Rain is carried by Narita and Nakamura, who’re convincing as two misplaced souls that by no means fairly join. The issue is that a lot of the movie rests on shaky floor, we by no means imagine in what we’re seeing. And should you don’t imagine, then why do you have to care? In its closing sections, Katayama’s intimate epic performs out like a twisted tackle The English Affected person, the place love and battle collide in loopy methods. And but the stakes by no means appear excessive sufficient.