The Insect Woman

Director: Shohei Imamura
Year Released: 1963
Rating: 0.5

Oh, to joy: Imamura's obsession with degenerate behavior. This is a tedious look at the lives of prostitutes who can't seem to get their acts together - people mistreat each other constantly and are generally unredeemable and unlikeable; to compound the inherent distance between the audience and the characters, the sets are gloomy and Japan seems to be set in perpetual darkness. In my view, Imamura didn't really get his act together until he became much older - 1979's Vengeance Is Mine is arguably his best film - and stretched his worldview out and made films with considerable more richness and with a lighter, more openly eccentric touch.