"Zigeunerweisen"
1980
Directed by Seijun Suzuki

The ambitious first entry in Seijun Suzuki's Taisho Trilogy nabbed Best Picture honors at the 1981 Japanese Academy Awards. Set during the run-up to WWII, the cerebral, challenging drama stars Toshiya Fujita as Aochi, a Japanese professor of German, who encounters his long-lost friend Nakasono (Yoshio Harada) while on a seaside holiday. A suspected serial killer, Nakasono leads Aochi into a sinister maze of treachery and deceit in which a mutual obsession with a beautiful geisha (Naoko Otani) morphs into an encounter with the supernatural. "Playful, sensuous and performed and shot with elan" (Time Out Film Guide). In Japanese with English subtitles.  148 minutes.