All Mixed Up

An irresistibly beautiful model lures a bored housewife into a lesbian romance. Soon enough, the former’s impotent lover and the latter’s meek husband are also involved in a diabolical ménage à quatre. Love, desire, sex and jealousy throw them into a turmoil of uncontrollable passion, carrying each other into a predetermined, self-destructive path. What follows is a delirious game of power, where blackmail, deceit and betrayal are on the daily agenda. Closely following the novel of the same name, in which the four ends of the swastika symbolize the four leads, Masumura unravels an outrageous merry-go-round of love, populated by his favourite characters: “lunatics who express their desires without shame or discretion”. A delicious guilty pleasure or over-the-top melodramatic study on l’amour fou and sexual obsession, “Manji” remains to this day one of Masumura’s craziest creations.

Original Title: Manji

Director: Yasuzo Masumura

Screenwriter: Kaneto Shindô

DoP: Setsuo Kobayashi

Music: Tadashi Yamauchi

Editor: Tatsuji Nakashizu

Principal Cast: Ayako Wakao, Kyôko Kishida, Yûsuke Kawazu

Country: Japan

Year: 1964

Running Time: 90’

Language: Japanese