Pale Flower

Muraki comes out of prison to find his yakuza world rearranged, and falls into a strange partnership at the gambling tables. Saeko, the young woman across from him, is not playing for money but for a rising threshold of risk, and he feeds it. Masahiro Shinoda builds the film as a portrait of compulsion rather than a crime story. The gambling scenes are shot almost ritually: the sound of the cards, the movement of a hand, the faces around the mat. Toru Takemitsu's sound work generates tension out of noise more than melody. It is black and white, widescreen, and its night sequences are among the finest the genre has. Who it is for: viewers drawn to the Japanese new wave and the existential branch of crime cinema. Who it is not for: anyone wanting plot and action, since nearly all of it happens around one table.