Viewed on DVD and Streaming. The sisterhood of the bordello. Prostitutes with hearts of gold. Customers falling for their pleasure service providers and Vice Versa. Do these themes seem familiar? All and many more well-worn subplots have been inserted into this mundane movie. It begins with the nonsensical choice of translated lyrical title--if anything is "watching" (besides disappointed viewers) it's a nearby river that is ready to flood and destroy things (again?) with the next tsunami. It ends in a physical mess (see below) and is pretty much a melodramatic mess in between. The script is pedestrian and attributed to Akira Kurosawa. It's easy to see why he was never allowed to make it into a movie. The studio-bound exterior real/virtual sets and the dressings/drawings/glass-shot-paintings thereof are well done except for the closing scenes (see below). Cinematography and sound are fine. Film score is light weight. Subtitles need a good grammatical scrubbing. They are frequently too long and often appear/disappear literally in an eye blink. However, inscriptions (like those on lanterns) are subtitled! Direction is undistinguished and workman like. Acting is uneven, amateurish, and far from riveting. Actors' makeup is atrocious. It subtracts rather than adds to the attractiveness of actresses. Male actor wigs are patently phony looking with visible seam lines. The story's conclusion is ridiculously contrived and as phony as the studio-bound outdoor set it takes place in. The latter seems to suffer from a lack of an adequate budget (if the film was shot linearly, perhaps the budget ran over and cuts were made at the end?). Shots of women perched in a rooftop (to avoid flood water) wearing "their best" colorful kimonos in daylight with an obviously artificial nighttime star field backdrop are far more amusing than dramatic. It's daytime TV soap opera masquerading as a movie. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.
Review of The Sea Is Watching
