Odd Obsession

Ichikawa's more straightforward narrative method doesn't do justice to all the ironies, but this is a still a singular and memorable movie.

One of his most striking films.

The film cannily shifts through different points of view.

The point is made early; the rest is perversity without passion.

It's a bit exhausting to watch, and if the point of the movie is to bring our attention to our aging bodies' inability to keep up, it succeeds.

Ichikawa’s cold, objective camera observes the calculations and designs, the careful maneuvers in lives that are fundamentally driven and obsessive.

It's a nearly perfect film version of Tanizaki's best-selling novel ably directed by Kon Ichikawa.

Beauty here is linked to the concept of the opposite, as the film's images parallel love with illness.

Odd Obsession won a film festival award a few years back, but just why isn't apparent. The movie displays a cold-blooded fascination with the erotic in its study of an aging man and his search for restored virility.

Never fully aroused me.