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Quickie Review - A Snake of June

Let's get the basics out of the way first. The movie is only 77 minutes long, features some of the most beautifully shot and erotic scenes ever, it rains during the entire film and the entire film is about sexual awakening.  P.S. There is a shitload of symbolism in this film, so if actually digesting a film isn't your cup of tea, skip it.

Shinya Tsukamoto, who is a huge name in Japan, directs and co-stars in this film about a sexually repressed, successful mental health counselor named Rinko, played by the mesmerizing Asuko Kurosawa.  Her husband, played by Yuji Kotari is a OCD obsessed man who ignores her completely.  The film begins with Rinko helping a caller who wants to die.  We soon find out the caller is a stalker and has taken revealing photographs of Rinko masturbating.  What happens over the next hour starts off as feeling torturous, but ends up being a sexual awakening unlike any other you've seen on film.  The movie is in no way pornographic and in my opinion is beautiful in how the character changes.

The film is littered with symbolism of life, growth, nature and physical and emotional change and adaptation, but it is also filled with some strange symbolism which is much harder to understand.  There are three scenes that truly come out of left field, but I feel they were all metaphors for how the characters are feeling.  The film also deals with death and dying and how it is tied into our feelings about ourselves and it makes the movie even stronger.

If you are in to art house movies, you will love the art direction and cinematography.  So much of this movie is perfect and so much of it is flawed, by a desire to truly grasp the human condition.  It's ugly and beautiful at the same time and it's what makes it work.

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