Lust in the Rain
雨の中の慾情
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A struggling manga artist falls for a newly divorced woman who is another man's lover, and his lust spirals into Tsuge-style dream logic.
The film opens on a dream of Yoshio's: at a country bus stop in a thunderstorm, he tricks a woman and rapes her in a flooded field.
Yoshio is a struggling manga artist in North Town, a poor place separated by a guarded border from wealthy South Town. His landlord, Oyaji, sends him with Imori, a self-styled novelist, to help a newly divorced woman, Fukuko, move house. Yoshio falls for her, but she is Imori's lover. Imori talks Yoshio into selling advertising for a North Town magazine copied from South Town's; their partner turns out to be a swindler, and Imori and Fukuko, on the run, move into Yoshio's cramped room, where he lies awake listening to them. Then Imori abandons Fukuko and slips south, where, it emerges, he has married into the richest family in town. Sent south on an errand for Oyaji, Yoshio takes Fukuko with him, and she sees Imori with his wife's family. On the drive back, when Oyaji paws at her, Yoshio shouts at him. Fukuko kisses him, and they become lovers.
At that moment Yoshio wakes in a field hospital in wartime China. He has lost his left arm and right leg and cannot feel the lower half of his body. Imori is a soldier from his unit; Oyaji is the army doctor. Memory returns in pieces: his unit's massacre of Chinese civilians, and a girl who shot him. Fukuko, in this world, was a woman he loved who worked in a brothel serving the army. He is told she has died and is handed her fountain pen.
He sinks back into dreams of her, and they will not end well: in one she is hit by a car, and he finds her in a rice field only to lose her again. The film suggests that even the hospital was part of the dream, the last one of a soldier dying where he fell. The final scene shows Fukuko somewhere Yoshio is not, as if her life had gone on without him.
Starring
Ryo Naritaas Yoshio
A struggling manga artist in a poor town, consumed by desire for Fukuko; in the war, a gravely wounded Japanese soldier in China.
Yoshio’s story
Yoshio's story begins inside his own dream: at a country bus stop in a storm, he tricks a woman and rapes her. In North Town he draws manga nobody buys, falls for Fukuko on the day he helps her move, and learns she is Imori's lover. He lies awake while the two share his room. Taking Fukuko south, he shouts at Oyaji for pawing her; she kisses him, and they become lovers. Then he wakes in a field hospital in wartime China, without his left arm or right leg, remembering his unit's massacre of civilians and a girl who shot him. Told Fukuko has died, he is handed her fountain pen. He sinks back into dreams of her that end badly, and the film suggests he is dying where he fell.
Eriko Nakamuraas Fukuko
A newly divorced woman who becomes Imori's lover and then Yoshio's; in the war, a woman from an army brothel whom Yoshio loved.
Fukuko’s story
In the North Town of Yoshio's dream, Fukuko has just left a marriage and is already Imori's lover, and follows him into Yoshio's room. Then Imori slips away south, and she learns that he has married into the richest family there and that she was only a diversion. Seeing him with his wife's family, she comes apart with anger and jealousy. When Yoshio shouts at Oyaji for pawing her, she kisses him. Beneath the dream lies the war, in which she worked in a brothel for Japanese soldiers and Yoshio came to love her. By the time he wakes she is dead, and her fountain pen is all that reaches him. In later dreams he loses her again. The last scene finds her where he is not, her life going on without him.
Go Moritaas Imori
A self-styled novelist full of schemes who abandons Fukuko for a rich family in the south; in the war, a soldier in Yoshio's unit.
Naoto Takenakaas Oyaji
Yoshio's landlord, who runs shady trades on the side; in the war, the army doctor at the field hospital.
Why it matters
Lust in the Rain begins as an erotic comedy about three misfits sharing a room and turns into a film about war. Its question is what desire is for once everything else has been taken. Yoshio's fantasies of Fukuko keep him company in a body the war has wrecked, and the film shows, piece by piece, what that war was: massacres of Chinese civilians, and a brothel for soldiers where the woman he loved worked and died. It does not make the fantasy innocent. The first scene is of a woman tricked out of her clothes and raped, and the dream keeps turning back to violence. Shinzo Katayama built the film from four stories by the manga artist Yoshiharu Tsuge. What it leaves open is uncomfortable and human: whether a dream of love can be a refuge without also being a way of not seeing.