Daibyônin (1993)

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Apparently inspired by Itami's own hospital stay after a yakuza stabbing (retaliation for their portrayal in Minbo), The Last Dance is savage satire of medical practices in Asia - in particular, physicians not telling the patient all the facts, I suppose from a belief that hearing a word like cancer can make you depressed and less likely to beat it - but by making the terminal patient a movie director who was making a movie about cancer and who is married to Nobuko Miyamoto, Itami's real life spouse, there's something's of an uncomfortable autobiographical element to it. Like Golden Geisha, the male lead is a lecherous adulterer, but was that Itami himself? In any case, the medical send-up works, with doctors smoking like chimneys in cancer wards, but what makes the film so interesting is how it progressively becomes like the director's movie. The cinematography, the music, the colors, the plot and dialog, even the way characters are used becomes more and more filmic as we approach the day of doom, heralded from the beginning in bold numbers. The turning point isn't quite the weird and woolly near-death experience (worth the viewing for this alone), even if one might want to say he never came out of it to explain the osmosis between real world and fantasy. 4 months 3 weeks ago