Takashi Ishii 4 Tales of Nami Review 2 - Angel Guts: Red Flash

Welcome to the second film in the Takashi Ishii 4 Tales of Nami boxset, Angel Guts: Red Flash. Considering the first film (Alone in the Night) was a bit of a stunner, this leaves the difficult follow-up, could anything stand up to the quality of the first film? 

Photographer Nami (Maiko Kawakami) is brought in last minute to take stills during a porn shoot. It's a brutal teenage rape porno which causes Nami to relive her own experience of assault. Drunk, she is seduced by Chihiro (Noriko Hayami), but that relationship seems to be sunk, thinking Chihiro unfaithful and so drunk again, she wakes up in a love hotel with a corpse of an unknown man, and is helped by Muraki (Jinpachi Nezu), a man with a sketchy past, to find out the what happened. 

Ultimately, Angel Guts: Red Flash has a narrative that is a little bit too twisty than perhaps it needed. It’s worth noting this up front because, though it’s a weakness of the film, it's eventually not too big of a deal. The reason for saying this is because I would argue that the narrative convolutions are secondary to two key aspects. The first is Takashi Ishii’s ability to create a sense of intimacy with the viewer, something apparent in Alone in the Night; the second is that this is a film that deals with trauma, where our three protagonists are powered by events in their past and the film focuses more on this than the pink aspects of the story, in my opinion at least. 

It’s worth drawing this out because you can see how ostensibly this is a pink film but sex, nudity, all that stuff, is handled in a way that again, though often prominent, is not the point, nor lingered on and sometimes ambiguous. As Nami is asked to shoot the porn film, the sense of it being an actual rape is both brutally real and balanced with images of the two ‘actors’ being surrounded by the film crew - they are acting. Later comments that it seemed "not to be simulated" are then contradicted by an observation that everyone knew what was happening makes sense but also raises the essential question: why should this be the subject of a porn film? Ishii films the awful ambiguity of the scene with significant power but also trusts the audience to recognise the sheer tawdry dreadfulness of it - it is both unflinching but never for a moment titillation.  

In opposition, as Nami is seduced by bar-owner Chihiro, the scene is filmed with a sense of intimacy. There may be nudity, but why not? It would be odd not to have any, would be almost prudish; the focus is on the emotional intimacy and the physical nature is part of that. Narratively it matters too, both in terms story and characters, because all of our three protagonists are suffering with the ghost of past trauma, and though there are definite slasher elements within the film, it’s all rooted in their individual emotions and their pasts, even if ultimately, as noted, it becomes a little too convoluted than perhaps it needs to be. 

Yet for the most part the film unfolds such that it is not always fully clear where it is going to go. This is no bad thing, because it reflects Nami's own struggles and these are real; often she gains unwanted attention, whether from men in the office or callers to her home who know what has happened. So the film is really grounded in Nami’s psychology and those around her. It’s again what elevates the film.

True, the narrative convulsions eventually make some genre elements of the plot make less sense than they should and feel inserted because a conventional narrative requires them, but they never overpower the essential importance of the damage that can be done to people, to their emotions, and how it affects their present and future. Equally, when faced with sexual assault, like Alone in the Night, the film refuses to linger too greatly on it. Admittedly it does more so in the context of the porn film being photographed but then it doesn’t sexualise it, instead quietly emphasises the horror of it without exaggerating it. When loving sexuality is introduced it does so again in a manner that suggests it is just that: intimate - spontaneous yes, but intimate, not salacious.  

Angel Guts: Red Flash may be an imperfect film at times, but at its best it has a powerful cinematic intimacy and Ishii is again happy to focus on characterisation and sidestep genericism, even if there are aspects of the plot that are a little bit out of the box. But these moments never intrude, never needle or irritate because they always lead us back to the focus on our three protagonists, their emotions, and just what happened one night in a love hotel.