Bonds of Love / 愛のきずな / Ai no kizuna (1969)

Obscure Japanese Film #125

 

Mari Sono and Makoto Fujita

Suzuki (Makoto Fujita) is a low-level manager at a travel agency who drives a modest car and is dissatisfied with his life. One night, driving home in heavy rain, he notices Yukiko (Mari Sono), an attractive young woman taking shelter by the side of the road, and manages to persuade her to accept a lift. He takes her home and she gives him her card with the name of the restaurant where she works. The two begin seeing each other, but things become complicated when it emerges that they each have a secret…

 

To reveal any more of the plot would spoil this movie – it’s based on a Seicho Matsumoto story, so the twists are kind of the point. However, I feel I should comment on one dramatic event so far as to say that a crime committed by one of the protagonists may seem random and unmotivated to non-Japanese viewers, but I believe that the motivation is the character’s desire to silence the victim by any means necessary in order not to lose face (which would also result in a loss of status and position). Incidentally, the original story was entitled ‘Tazutazushi’ and published in 1963; this remains the sole film version, although it has been remade for TV three times since. 

 

Director Takashi Tsuboshima seems to have recognised the absurd aspects of the story and approached it as a black comedy, albeit one that’s played fairly straight for the most part. One notable exception is a slapstick sequence when a distracted Suzuki pours milk and sugar into an ashtray instead of his coffee cup. The choice of Makoto Fujita for the leading role works in the film’s favour – he doesn’t look in the least like a film star, and wasn’t one, though he was a popular TV star (often in comic parts) and also gave a notable performance in a leading role in Masaki Kobayashi’s Hymn to a Tired Man. 

 

Fujita’s co-star here, Mari Sono, was a famous pop singer who passed away very recently at the age of 80. Considering she was not a trained actress, she does pretty well here. There are also strong supporting performances by Makoto Sato and Chisako Hara as well as a cameo by Noriko Sengoku.

Makoto Sato

 

Chisako Hara

 

Noriko Sengoku

Bonds of Love is a very engaging and well-made variation on the Matsumoto crime formula; Tsuboshima’s slightly tongue-in-cheek approach to the material may be unexpected, but feels exactly right given the implausibility of the plot. Tsuboshima (1928-2007) was a minor director, many of whose films were vehicles for a popular group of comedians/musicians known as the Crazy Cats; Bonds of Love seems to have been an anomaly in his filmography. It was a co-production between Toho and Watanabe Productions, a company belonging to Shin Watanabe (1927-87), a former jazz bassist who started the company as a talent agency in the 1950s before expanding into film production in 1962, subsequently producing at least 48 films, virtually all of which have fallen into obscurity.