WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE [ 1/2]
Wet and wild sex. In Japanese, with English subtitles. Running time: 119 minutes. Not rated (sex). At the Lincoln Plaza, 63rd Street and Broadway.
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SAEKO, the beautiful young woman at the center of the Japanese movie “Warm Water Under a Red Bridge,” has a strange medical condition.
When sexually aroused, her body secretes gallons – and I do mean gallons – of water, which flow off to irrigate her garden and replenish the local river.
Out-of-work Yosuke (Koji Yakusho) journeys to the small town where Saeko (Misa Shimizu) lives, in search of a golden Buddha statue that a homeless man told him is hidden in a house near a red bridge.
As it happens, that house is occupied by Saeko and her fortune-teller grandmother.
It doesn’t take long before the handsome Yosuke is engaged in a wet-and-wild affair with the human geyser.
Seventy-something Shohei Imamura, one of Japan’s most respected filmmakers and a two-time Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, tackles this wacky premise with gusto.
But there’s not enough here to justify the almost two hours.
“Warm Water,” which was at the 2001 New York Film Festival, would have worked better at, say, 90 minutes.
A tiresome recurring gag about an African marathon runner is my No. 1 candidate for the cutting-room floor.
***
FLEEING BY NIGHT []
THIS is an overwrought Taiwanese soaper about three people and their mixed-up relationship.
There’s Shao-dung, a classical cellist who returns to 1930s China after studying in New York; Ing’er, his fiancée in an arranged marriage; and Lin Chung, a male opera singer.
Shao-dung likes Ing’er, but he also is drawn sexually to Lin Chung. Which one will he choose?
It’s not worth sitting through this 123-minute melodrama to find out.
The only bright spot is Rene Liu, who plays Ing’er.
One of Taiwan’s best-known actresses, she was seen on New York screens last year in the vastly superior comedy “The Personals.”
In Chinese, with English subtitles. Running time: 123 minutes. Not rated (sexual situations). At the Quad. 13th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues.
– Musetto