Mr Mrs Miss Lonely / ミスター・ミセス・ミス・ロンリー (1980)

 Obscure Japanese Film #10

Ryudo Uzaki, Mieko Harada and Yoshio Harada

Best-known for playing the vengeful Lady Kaede in Ran (1985), a very young-looking Mieko Harada here plays Chisato, a girl who becomes involved with a couple of minor league criminals (played with insouciant cool by Ryudo Uzaki and Yoshio Harada) looking to scam a corrupt, model-transport-loving businessman (veteran star Rentaro Mikuni, known in the West for films such as Hara Kiri and The Burmese Harp). This brief synopsis probably makes it sound like this meandering, new wave-style film has more of a structured plot than it actually does, although there is quite a good twist ending (albeit one which may not bear too much scrutiny). There’s a framing device of Chisato writing to an unseen novelist to express how much she identifies with the protagonist of his novel, but this seemed entirely unnecessary to me. Another random element is the presence of musicians from the Down Town Fighting Boogie Woogie Band, who repeatedly appear playing in the background of various street scenes (actor Ryudo Uzaki was actually the band’s frontman). 

 

Mieko Harada and Rentaro Mikuni

Chisato could not be more different from Lady Kaede; here, playing an apparently feckless teenager, Harada wears her hair in braids for most of the film and, somewhat annoyingly, is always sniffing for no apparent reason. Co-written under a pen-name by Harada (who also co-produced) in collaboration with director Tatsumi Kumashiro (best-known for his Roman porno films), this Arts Theatre Guild production feels self-indulgent in that one suspects not only that they made a lot of it up on the spot, but that not a single suggestion was rejected. However, despite the fact that the film is much too long (2 hours 18 minutes) and would undoubtedly stretch the patience of many viewers, I rather liked it on the whole due to the lack of clichés, the oddball characters (which also include Kihachi Okamoto favourite Hideyo Amamoto as a wily old schemer) and the consistently unexpected ways in which scenes were staged. It’s also well-photographed (Takao Oshikiri) and scored (Shuichi Chino). 

Hideyo Amamoto and Yoshio Harada