In
The Princess
Blade (or Shura
Yuki-hime, in Japanese), Ito
Hideaki plays an underground terrorist named Takeshi,
officially making a living by a gas station incongruently named
'The Seven Stars', deep in nowhereland where nature is in abundance
and humans are scanty except some sword-wielding assassins of
the Takemikazuchi clan, intent of whaking the leading role of
the movie, Princess Yuki (played by Shaku Yumiko),
to pieces. Of course destiny (in this case the screenwriter) puts
Yuki and Takeshi together, but not in the way you might expect
it. They never be lovers or anything even remotely resembling
some sexual involvement, from the first minute to the last. In
which Takeshi got all the bad luck, being in a world where good
deeds never pays a single dime and where kindness is as taken-for-granted
as sin.
The
only watchable elements of this flick is Ito Hideaki and nature.
The
lake scenes are beautiful beyond a dream, and Takeshi's place
(from the outside) is a great visual treat of a kind. The rest
is typically, post-industrially, inducing eyesores. However, the
eerie lighting for the entire movie -- everything is
colored in nauseating yellow and/or dull black -- sometimes yields
perfect pictures like in Japanese animation movies. |
|
Or
perhaps all that is quite right. The story is after all about
isolation, vengeance and hopelessness. At least even in this sordid
habitat Ito Hideaki shines. Melancholy is all over him like water
to a fish; he plays the part well.
Shaku
Yumiko is a gross failure. First of all, she is not much to look
at, let alone to be a princess in a fantasyland -- even though
'princess' here is only a word, nothing more. Secondly,
she wears nothing but the dirty-dark-blue pants and jackets, the
same with every other swordsperson in this movie. Thirdly, she
doesn't master enough swordsplaying to do it all by herself (her
action parts are done by stuntspersons). Fourth, she can't even
effectively use the only assets she possesses, namely a pair of
eyes large enough for a Japanese, to convey any emotion whatsoever,
even after she is supposed to be able to get rid of her trained-to-kill
expression and to get emotional, around the second half of the
movie.
If
you want the best of the silverscreen heroines, see the movie
Azumi
(2004), starring Ueto Aya.
Ueto is the most beautiful sword-playing leading lady in recent
Japanese movies, albeit the fact that the character she plays
there is a ninja, not a princess. |
|
