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Brilliant and touching

An action-packed slog

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Exploitation of traditional cinematic narrative devices - or just plain exploitation - is a field where veteran director Seijun Sukuki excels, and in Carmen from Kawachi he applies his unique stylisations wonderfully to the idealisation of the big city/country divide so popular in Japanese cinema. Having been taken advantage of back home (gang raped) and having seen her mother prostitute herself to a wealthy local businessman, Tsuyuko has no option but to sell herself as well, but chooses to do it on her own terms, leaving life on the mountain to work as a hostess in a night club in Osaka.Although we get a wonderful Japanese swinging 60s' rendition of the Habanera at Club Dada, Tsuyuko 's life as a cabaret dancer is more Lulu than Carmen, hooking up with a love-struck client, a lesbian fashion designer, an artist, an old flame from home and then a rich man, but Suzuki at least spares her the traditional tragic fate of opera's fallen women. Shot in black-and-white widescreen with some highly stylised sequences and a New Wave sensibility, Carmen from Kawachi's is as lurid and colourful as any of Seijun Suzuki's later work.