To celebrate the 90th year of the birth of mangaka Osamu Tezuka a live action adaptation of Barbara (1973) by his son, film director Macoto Tezka, has been released. A very adult fantasy about strange love, romance and spiritual witchcraft, this contemporary and fantastical visualisation, shot by Christopher Doyle, is a compelling blend of art-house and fantasy film-making.
“All novelists are scumbags.”
Successful writer Yosuke Mikura (Gorô Inagaki) is wandering through the city, on his way home to his neatly designed modern apartment, when he comes across a girl in the subway who is crashed out, very much the worse for wear. She is Barbara (Fumi Nikaidô) and Yosuke takes her home to be sure that she’s safe. But the girl’s vivacious persona emerges as she stomps through the apartment and manages to swig a huge amount of 50 year old malt whiskey. Yosuke’s attempts to eject his exuberant guest prove to be more tricky than he thought it might be. His life changes dramatically when he becomes increasingly infatuated with this hard drinking lascivious muse and he wishes to develop stronger relations with her regardless of the cost.
A combination of neon-coloured and naturalistic environments in the visual design and implementation of Tezuka’s Barbara gives an aesthetic indication of the contrast between fantasy and reality that perpetuates Yosuke’s life and also our engagement with it. This is a deranged love story of compulsion and unexpected alterations of life’s expectations, apparent from the opening which quotes Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.” In some ways the writer writing about a writer is a familiar premise in both film and literary genres. Yosuke is popular author with a desire to change his art and we witness his increasingly bizarre sexual encounters and incidents along the way, although in this instance there is more witchcraft and fantasy surrealism than one would normally expect. Barbara’s romantic Harpy nature ensures that she mocks him, showing her knowledge of his works but declaring of his books, “I love them as mindless reading.” This is something he himself notes at a media event that he is a “trendy author at dull award”. As their relationship develops Barbara introduces him to a variety of new environments including a neon glowing strobing sexuality and fetish dance club. Later, Yosuke responds positively to the suggestion of “let’s get married,” but discovers that this apparently innocent proposal will involve him joining a wider spiritual sect that requires their ceremony to be ordained in a temple, in the nude. This is run by scary, domineering, tarot-card reading witch mother Mnemosyne (Eri Watanabe), whose bizarre head apparel is replicated perfectly from the manga. She makes her demands clear: “You must sign this oath if you want to be with us.” And, of course, Yosuke’s blood is the only ink that can sanction any such demonic contract.
The more adult oriented manga and writings of Tezuka had been made into anime before – by him with his film studio’s Animerama films, like Animerama: A Thousand and One Nights / Cleopatra 千夜一夜物語 / クレオパトラ(1969/1970) so the links here are clear (particularly in the myths, spells and spiritual themes that can be seen in all three of the Animerama films). Here, the difference is that this is live action rather than animated and has a contemporary setting.
You may recall Macoto Tezka from his debut feature The Legend of the Stardust Brothers a mad sci-fi musical mixture of colour and culture. In some ways Barbara has links to this thematic ilk but pays far more attention to its cross-genre/cross-culture/cross-everything narrative. Troublesome to convert to screen in its multitudinous depictions of fetishistic or denied sexuality. But for all the erotic tendencies and (like the Animerama films) interpretations of multiple tales from a known source (here a contemporary alteration and adaptation of “The Tales of Hoffmann”) this is a film about artistic, moral, fantastical and entertaining depictions of the taboo rather than titillation.
Extras on the disc include a number of welcome interviews from Macoto Tezka, who explains how and why this film was ten years in inception and the manner by which he managed to get an enthusiastic Christopher Doyle involved, Doyle himself, Goro Inagaki and Fumi Nikaido, as well as a making-of feature and a variety of deleted scenes, notably an alternative ending.