While he has created some of the most notable and lasting entries in the J-horror craze of the late 1990s, this only touches the mere surface of what defines the overall work of Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa. The features he did for the sadly short-lived Director’s Company is an interesting and insightful journey through the visual and thematic landscape which he would explore further in his famous works such as “Cure”, “Creepy” or “Cloud”. “Bumpkin Soup”, also known as “The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girl”, from 1985 is his sophomore feature and had previously been rejected by Nikkatsu for being “too weird” before it was picked up by Director’s Company. The playful melange of comedy, coming-of-age and even musical is an experimental take on Kurosawa’s core theme of the relationship of people and places as well as the search for meaning in the modern world.
Buy This Title
on Terracotta by clicking on the image below
Akiko (Yoriko Doguchi) has traveled from her home village in the country to Tokyo University in search for Minoru (Kenso Kato), who she has been in love with ever since high school. However, finding him on campus proves to be a difficult task, as he rarely attends his classes, such as the psychology seminar of Professor Hirayama (Juzo Itami), who teaches his students about his concept of shame. When Akiko turns up at Minoru’s music club, he is not there either, but she meets Emi (Usagi Aso), who promises to help her, even though her instruction proves to be fruitless as well.
As she spends more time at university, she eventually runs into Minoru, only to find out he has changed quite a bit since their last encounter. Seemingly obsessed with sex, similar to the other students and professors, she is disgusted by the boy she had been in love with for so long. To make matters worse, she has caught the attention of Hirayama who needs her to prove his concept of shame once and for all.
“Bumpkin Soup” is a feature which may be integral in understanding how Kurosawa shaped his unique visual style and thematic approach, but it is more of a cinematic playground than an actual feature film. Often bordering on the absurd, the movie is a melange of various influences ranging from Japanese cinema of the late 60s, especially Seijun Suzuki and Nagisa Oshima, and even the Czech New Wave. Kurosawa also switches from a classic visual approach to a home video aesthetic, adding to the overall amateurish quality of some sequences as well as their improvised nature. The same can be said about the dialogues and the overall line delivery of the characters, which often feels like watching an absurdist stage play written by the likes of Samuel Beckett or Eugene Ionesco. Many of the performances, most notably Juzo Itami as Hirayama, seem to embrace the dadaist nature of the plot, delivering some unforgettable and quite funny scenes, with his take on the horny professor trope being perhaps one of the highlights.
Check also this video
Nevertheless, despite its absurdist tone, “Bumpkin Soup” offers quite a lot of food for thought if one cares to delve deeper into some of its scenes and themes. The alternative title, to name one example, derives from the concept of absolute notes, or absolute music, which is even explained at an early stage in the feature, resulting in a performance of such lead by Hirayama. Later on, he scolds two of his students and their continuous (and annoying) quest to find reason and ask their teachers about it. Adding to that the contrast between country and city, Kurosawa ironically explores the notion of how something simple can be made overly complicated in academic discourse, while also highlighting how these smart sounding concepts are nothing but a smoke screen to hide sinister or sexual motives. Indeed, as with many of Kurosawa’s features, more than once it helps to have a look at the various visual clues the director hides in the background, showing his early talent for visual composition that is more telling than what is actually being said by the characters.
“Bumpkin Soup” is certainly not the most ideal entry for those wanting to explore the works of Kiyoshi Kurosawa. For those interested in how he developed his style and themes, this early feature will most likely prove to be quite a delight as you will find a lot in the images the director has created here, the performances and the characters.
