A Snake of June

Rinko answers calls at a suicide prevention line; she is married, orderly, and tells nobody anything. One day photographs arrive in the post: images of her taken in moments nobody knew about. The blackmailer does not want money; he wants her to do particular things. Her husband, meanwhile, does nothing but clean the house. The subject is not blackmail but suppressed desire. What the blackmailer demands is not chosen to humiliate her but to force her into things she wants and will not allow herself, and that ambiguity is what makes the film uncomfortable. The form is shot in a single colour: the whole film takes place under constant rain and is delivered through a blue filter. The sound is exaggerated, with water and metal audible in every scene. Shinya Tsukamoto directs, plays the blackmailer and shoots the film himself, a habit of multiple roles that runs through all his work. It won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice film festival. Asuka Kurosawa plays Rinko and Yūji Kōtari her husband. Who it is for: viewers who like Japanese independent cinema and formal experiment. Who it is not for: anyone wanting distance from sexual content and scenes of coercion; the film is insistent in those passages.