Reviews & Ratings for
Kagi More at IMDbPro »

6 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
An interesting take on the novel, 6 May 2006

Author: Anthony Fontanilla from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The movie is about an elderly Japanese man who is sexually obsessed. He is getting shots from his doctor so that he can continue to have an active sex life with his beautiful wife. (In those days they did not have Viagra.) He wants to feel young and sexually excited. He has discovered that jealousy is one way to obtain this feeling. So he tries to get the young doctor interested in his wife by doing such things as getting them drunk together and having the doctor develop naked pictures of her. The doctor is already involved with the family's daughter, but she is not nearly as physically attractive as the mother.

This is a movie based on the novel "The Key" by Tanizaki Jun'ichiro. I have read the English translation and can say that the changes which have been made serve to help the adaptation work on the screen.

Overall it is an entertaining film. The ending differs from the book somewhat and I found it to be quite comical.

3 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
strange!!!, 17 July 2005

Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This is one of the weirder Japanese movies I've seen (though not nearly as weird as my favorite, HAPPINESS OF KATAKURIS) and not exactly a comedy. The lead is an older male who is having impotency problems. So, he receives injections (more about that later) and gets his sexual satisfaction drugging his wife and photographing her nude or putting her in intimate situations with a young doctor (they don't have sex, but the old guy enjoys feeling jealous of them--it makes him feel younger). Unfortunately, the old guy is REALLY sick and dies after watching his wife strip for him. Then, in an odd twist of fate, the wife, the doctor and the old man's odd daughter all accidentally ingest poison and die! Well, not all of it was accidental--the daughter put poison in her mom's tea because she was jealous of the relationship between the doctor and the mother. Too weird!

Although I guess I liked it (just because it dared to be so different) it is not a movie I would rush out to watch. Another problem is that the version from The International Collection has crappy dubbing. In the prologue to the movie, the doctor must talk for about 5 minutes and NONE of it was subtitled--what he said is completely beyond anyone who doesn't speak Japanese. Also, the material is VERY sexually charged (though there is no nudity in the film) but they talk so cryptically about the impotence I had a strong feeling either the people that did the subtitles left A LOT out or perhaps the movie was originally very cryptic. For example, we have no injections what sort of injections the old man gets or why it's BAD that he's been getting them so often. I was just baffled.

11 out of 26 people found the following review useful:
Well directed, visual.. but with lousy end, 20 June 2002
Author: Jaakko Saari from Finland

Personally I was disappointed to this since I expected so much from it since I've read the book by Junichiro Tanizaki, which was very unique and great. The characters are seen too dark and sick way in this movie, and viewer can't really emphatize much with them. This alone, makes it fight against the very idea of the original masterpiece of Tanizaki. In addition, the characters are different than described in the book. Especially Kenji's wife Ikuko is much younger than in the book, which steers the movie already out from the right path. In addition, Kimura's character is seen too selfish. Also, the refer to key, which "kagi" means, is somewhat superficial and synthetic. The original book was written through the couple's diaries which offered much more depth to the characters, and allowed person to get inside their heads. The movie tries just shock people, which it really does. Another surprising thing is that the movie was rated K16 here in Finland. May I ask why?? The strong visual content instead makes this movie work, and was the reason why I bothered myself to rate this here in IMDB. It's really well made, and the visual cutting brings up emotions very efficiently. In today's movie, this wouldn't work, but when we think that this was made in '59 it's somewhat interesting. Also, actors do proper job. For all those who have read the book, you might be disappointed to this movie. Others, I can recommend with reservation.

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