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Warm Water Under A Red Bridge Details

2001 Certificate 15
  • Rated:
  • 60
  • from 715 members

Shohei Imamura's WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE stars the spirited Koji Yakusho as a Tokyo businessman whose company has recently gone bankrupt, leaving him unemployed. Estranged from his wife and with time on his hands, Yosuke (Koji) remembers a story told to him by a recently deceased friend, Taro (Kazuo Kitamura), about a .. Read more

Starring Misa Shimizu, Koji Yakusho, Mitsuko Baisho, Manasaku Fuwa
Director Shohei Imamura
Genres Drama, World Cinema

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Warm Water Under A Red Bridge cover art

Warm Water Under A Red Bridge

Shohei Imamura's WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE stars the spirited Koji Yakusho as a Tokyo businessman whose company has recently gone bankrupt, leaving him unemployed. Estranged from his wife and with time on his hands, Yosuke (Koji) remembers a story told to him by a recently deceased friend, Taro (Kazuo Kitamura), about a hidden treasure. Not necessarily convinced that he'll find anything, Yosuke is nonetheless curious about the legend. He takes a train to a suburban fishing village and follows Taro's directions to the treasure--which, surprisingly, seem to be accurate. The only complication is a young woman, the mystifying, beautiful, and deeply bizarre Saeko (Miza Shimuzu), who lives in the house where Taro's clues lead.
Imbued with magic, mystery, hope, and an overflowing sense of relief, WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE is Imamura's comic chef d'oeuvre. The plot is thoroughly funny in a soft, trying, intelligent way and the characters are well developed and wonderfully tangible. Drifting photography of the ocean, the streams running through the small village into to a local canal, and less obvious sources of "vital essence" illustrate the film's message: good water can be a purifying and reinvigorating conductor of life's currents.

Starring Misa Shimizu, Koji Yakusho, Mitsuko Baisho, Manasaku Fuwa, Kazuo Kitamura, Yukiya Kitamura, Yoshie Negishi, Sumiko Sakamoto
Director Shohei Imamura
Studio PALISADES TARTAN
Run time DVD: 2 hrs
Certificate Certificate 15
Genres Drama, World Cinema
Language DVD: Japanese
Subtitles DVD: English
Released DVD: 25 Aug 2003
Production year: 2001
Format DVD

  • Critics' reviews (6) of Warm Water Under A Red Bridge

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  • 3 stars out of 5

    Shohei Imamura's adaptation of Henmi Yo's fantastical novel — about a young woman who expels torrents of water during sex — seems more like an over-elaborate anecdote than a profound meditation on female sensuality. The first time that Misa Shimizu is seen to achieve her spectacular orgasm, the effect is as amusing as it is unexpected. However, each subsequent time that disillusioned businessman Koji Yakusho pleasures her, the resulting image loses some of its visual and metaphorical impact. Indeed, you wish Yakusho would finally realise that the “treasure” an old hobo has sent him into the countryside to locate is actually emotional, not material. Hisao Inagaki's designs are exquisite, and are captured in all their glory by cinematographer Shigeru Komatsubara but, apart from some obvious asides on capitalism and race, the film lacks the philosophical depth to complement its gleeful physicality.

    • Radio Times
    • Posted 29 Jan 2006

  • "...[A] superb, darkly comic fable....Imamura is a vital, fearless filmmaker who tempers bleak, often satirical humor with compassion...He is invariably complex, provocative and unpredictable..."

    • Los Angeles Times
    • Posted 11 Mar 2005

  • Most helpful member's review of Warm Water Under A Red Bridge

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  • 7 out of 7 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 4 stars

    Wonderful imaginative Japanese film

    In this modern Japanese allegory the redundant Yosuke sets out to find treasure in a house by a Red Bridge where the waters of the river and sea meet and provide an interest in life for the old fisherman sitting with their rods on its banks. There is no treasure and instead Yosuke learns the life giving importance of water and sex.

    At the house he finds Saeko who vents gallons of water during sex, an extraordinary concept symbolizing the purifying and rebirth properties of water.

    The destitute philosophical Taro living in a tent on the banks of a river represents the tranquillity of water, the suicide of Saeko’s terminally ill mother in a torrential river illustrates it's destructive power and reminds us of the heeling qualities of water. In his new job as a fisherman Yosuke water provides work and food. Saeko and Yusoke visit an atomic accelerator that relies on water to research the origins of the universe.

    As we are drawn into the allegory we do not relate to the characters with the same intensity as in a drama, but the role of the redundant Yosuke seeking a way out of his problems, harassed by his nagging wife, elicits a sympathetic response.

    Well acted and photographed this masterly film is directed by the 76 year old Sohei Imamura and apparently the philosophy of the old man Taro represents the director’s outlook on life.

      • milnerv from Dorset
      • Posted 27 Aug 2005 07:45

  • Most recent members' review of Warm Water Under A Red Bridge

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  • 0 out of 1 person found this review helpful

    Rated - 1 star

    water torture

    This is possibly the worst film I've ever seen - whilst the visuals are lovely, the ongoing sound effects of water dripping, running and cascading everywhere gets a bit much. Add to this very little story and poor characterisation and there's not much to recommend it. Consider it 90 minutes of your life that you can't get back and choose wisely elsewhere.

      • VickyR from Scunthorpe
      • Posted 26 Mar 2008 16:19

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      • Shohei Imamura's WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE stars the spirited Koji Yakusho as a Tokyo businessman whose company has recently gone bankrupt, leaving him unemployed. Estranged from his wife and ...