Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2002)

Shohei Imamura's WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE stars the spirited Koji Yakusho as a Tokyo businessman whose company has recently gone bankrupt, leaving him unemployed. Estranged from his wife and with time on his hands, Yosuke (Koji) remembers a story told to him by a recently deceased friend, Taro (Kazuo Kitamura), about a hidden treasure. Not necessarily convinced that he'll find anything, Yosuke is nonetheless curious about the legend. He takes a train to a suburban fishing village and follows Taro's directions to the treasure--which, surprisingly, seem to be accurate. The only complication is a young woman, the mystifying, beautiful, and deeply bizarre Saeko (Miza Shimuzu), who lives in the house where Taro's clues lead.

Imbued with magic, mystery, hope, and an overflowing sense of relief, WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE is Imamura's comic chef d'oeuvre. The plot is thoroughly funny in a soft, trying, intelligent way and the characters are well developed and wonderfully tangible. Drifting photography of the ocean, the streams running through the small village into to a local canal, and less obvious sources of "vital essence" illustrate the film's message: good water can be a purifying and reinvigorating conductor of life's currents.

This film screened in September 2001 as part of the 39th New York Film Festival, organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City.