Memories of Matsuko

Memories of Matsuko

Starring: Miki Nakatani, Eita, Teruyuki Kagawa, Mikako Ichikawa, Yusuke Iseya

Directed by: Tetsuya Nakashima

Reviewed by: Conor Flynn






• Trailers
• Making of Matsuko
• Film to storyboard comparison

‘Memories of Matsuko’ takes its influences from a wide range of melodramas; everything from ‘Gone with the Wind,’ to the films of Douglas Sirk and on through to contemporary films like ‘Amelie’ and ‘Moulin Rouge’. It also manages to be bleaker than the bleakest moments of each of those films combined…

The film starts off cynically by relating the idea that everyone has aspirations which can come to nothing. What follows is the story of Matsuko; a woman who constantly tries to escape into an idealistic world, but constantly meets with the reality of a male dominated and violent society. Her story is told through flashback as her nephew pieces together her life story and how she came to be murdered. Matsuko is surrounded by men who consist of liars, perverts and failed artists or jealous lovers, yakuzas and pimps. Each is treated as a potential lover, but similarly disappoint in the same way as Matsuko’s estranged father. To make things even more harrowing are some bright and breezy musical numbers that reflect Matsuko’s inner need for love, the reality which will never happen. The moral of standing by your friends instead of escaping into a fantasy world is a positive one, but it maybe too bittersweet for some to swallow.

‘Memories of Matsuko’ is a long trawl through tragic melodrama which could so easily have been a masterpiece if the film was a little less focused on the fantastical elements which dominate the film. The visuals, which will bring to mind the excellent ‘Moulin Rouge,’ are spectacular (spectacular). Unfortunately they dwarf the narrative, but there are other problems as well. Even if the story is a fantasy, it still needs to follow its own internal logic, but here we have a vast majority of flashback sequences told by a series of unreliable third person narrators. Furthermore, Matsuko interjects her own voice-over between the flashbacks, but the transition between the different set of narrators feels clumsy, unnatural and intrusive. This choppy effect distances the viewer from Matsuko, making it difficult to care for her plight. Thankfully the film is held together by a superb central performance by Nakatani who manages to invest more emotion into her character through wide ranging expressions than anything given to her though the messy script.

The picture quality of the film on DVD is very heavily compressed, pixelated and blurry. It looks very poor. The sound is ok, but nothing special and doesn’t really make much use of the rear speakers in 5.1. The 2.0 is also fine. Three extras are included on the disc; trailers, a ‘making of’ and a ‘film to storyboard comparison’. All are pretty self explanatory.

The film is a potential masterpiece killed by overzealous visuals and an unfocused script. It’s difficult to see this tragedy being an experience you would want to repeat over and over again. Rent before buying.