Free Tokio Whip by Arturo Silva

point the driver’s attention to this, but she seems to be totally incognizant of Hiromi’s presence.
    Arlene is dreaming of a woman who wants to sleep with her, but Arlene is not ready yet. She is at the woman’s apartment; she looks out briefly as the view is so uninteresting, Shinozaki. Now Arlene is sleeping; she is in bed with two other women whom the first woman has chosen for Arlene to sleep with. The woman is watching, disinterestedly, not quite voyeuristically. Later, Arlene walks around Shinozaki, and revises her earlier opinion, having found some small interesting shops, an attractive office block, small children on tricycles. It is Sunday morning, and softly, the radio plays some Gospel, arousing, caressing.
    ***
    The costs of confusion notwithstanding, Kaoru refuses to be confused, no costs, no confusion. Everything in order. Office-home-office-club-home. Business is done. How old are the boys now?
    ***
    Passed the Chinese restaurant, you know, the one that caters to the theater crowd and the hostess always wears a different hat. It smelled like cotton candy.
    He notices a passing woman and immediately starts thinking of how to seduce her when he almost as immediately sees a building and starts to film it – and loses the woman.
    ***
    The Lady of Musashino ( Musashino fujin , 1951)
    The past and the present and by obvious implication the future, the east and the west sides of Tokyo are one, Mizoguchi seems to be telling us in that final shot, a masterful pan that begins with the tall susuki reeds of the ancient Musashino Plain, and concludes with a view – the very first in the film – of the city itself. Morally, it is as if Mizoguchi is saying that the young hero of the film, Tsutomu, will choose the city and its excitement and relative freedoms over the insidiousness of rural family life. Moreso, Mizoguchi is making a reversal here: one usually views the city from East (good, tradition) to West (bad, novelty and expansion). In making this reversal, he is deepening the argument of union, a view with which this author is in complete agreement; after all, he lives in Kichijoji, where once those reeds and marshes flourished (they are still to be found in pockets here and there), and which was founded as an extension of an east-side temple.
    We see the Plain; the deaths of the parents; the distant air-raids; the discovery of a skull. Michiko is played by the “enjoyably plump and radiant” Kinuyo Tanaka. Her cousin Tsutomu (Akihiko Katayama) has returned from the war, from Burma. Young, restless, and good , Michiko allows him to look after her estate.
    Complications arise: her cousin Ono (So Yamamura), who lives nearby, has lost his fortune, for which his wife Tomiko (Yukiko Todoroki) is ready to abandon him for Michiko’s husband, the unimaginative Stendahl scholar Tadao (Masayuki Mori), for whom, as Mizoguchi’s biographer says, “adultery signifies stimulus.” Worse, Tomiko spreads the terrible rumor that Michiko and Tsutomu are having an affair. How absurd! They may certainly be fond of one another, but they could never even imagine such a thing. (Tsutomu’s modest aspirations are for a young fellow student whom he visits either at her home or at “La Vie est Belle” café in the city.)
    Things get worse. Michiko and Tsutomu go for a long walk. A thunder-storm erupts; they must spend the night together at an inn. Chastely, certainly. (There is a tremendous long shot of them walking in the fields as the daylight sky is lit up by lightning. One must wonder how long Mizoguchi sat there waiting to get that shot. If for no other reason, the film must be seen for this and the final shot. ((Of course, the author does not dismiss the film as readily as the biographer does. Perhaps it is not a major film, but it is certainly worth seeing.)) Anyway, back to the story.)
    And worse. Akiyama and Tomiko steal away with the deed to Michiko’s property. Tomiko