MOVIE REVIEW : Japan’s ‘Lady Camellia’ Mirrors ‘La Traviata’

In “Lady Camellia” (the Little Tokyo Cinema 1), a Sapporo cabdriver and a tubercular geisha, both opera lovers, find their lives are beginning to parallel those of Violetta and Alfredo in their favorite opera, “La Traviata.”

To what extent life does in fact imitate art won’t be revealed here; it’s enough to say that the film was written by Tora-san director Yoji Yamada and his longtime co-writer Yoshitaka Asama, who this time directs. This means that even though the film is a full-blown old-fashioned romance told to the heady strains of Verdi, it is tempered with the usual Yamada-Asama warmth and conviction that true happiness is to be found in everyday life by those who live as ordinary people.

The film unfolds in flashbacks as the cabbie, Kakujiro (Kenichi Kato), tells his story to an opera star, (Emiko Akiyama, an actual opera star), while he drives her to a distant engagement. Kakujiro meets the geisha Koyuki (Keiko Matsuzaka) working at a rowdy Sapporo cab drivers’ bash. Koyuki may be beautiful and elegant, but she doesn’t enjoy the status and protection of a traditional geisha; her sleazy patron (Shuji Otaki) would like to turn her into a prostitute for his business contacts.

We never do find out why a nice girl like Koyuki became such a despairing, hard-drinking (and hard-coughing) party girl, abandoning her own dream of becoming an opera singer. It matters little, for Matsuzaka makes her irresistible. She is a woman who clearly loves being an actress and a movie star in the grand old studio manner. She sweeps you away, much like Rita Hayworth did in her day. (You could easily see Glenn Ford in role of the cabdriver, a decent, down-to-earth, single parent with two small kids tempted by this self-destructive beauty.)

If you didn’t know otherwise, you would believe that “Lady Camellia” was directed by Yamada himself. The sense of compassionate but often humorous observation, of caring ease in the staging of each scene and love of off-the-beaten-path Japan that characterizes his best work, is all present here. In this instance, these qualities keep the film from slipping into all-out soap opera. “Lady Camellia” (Times-rated Family) shamelessly wears its heart on its sleeve, but this doesn’t keep it from being a surprisingly potent heart-tugger.

“Yagyu Secret Scrolls” and “Blazing Sword” open today at the Little Tokyo Cinema 2 as part of the continuing Samurai series.

‘LADY CAMELLIA’ (TSUBAKIHIME)

A Shochiku presentation. Executive producer Yasuyoshi Tanaka. Director Yoshitaka Asama. Screenplay Yoji Yamada, Asama. Camera Sanji Hanada. Music Nariakai Saegusa, Verdi. Art director Nobutaka Yoshino. With Keiko Matsuzaka, Kenichi Kato, Emiko Akiyama, Kei Suma, Hiromitsu Suzuki, Shuji Otaki, Misuzu Nakamoto. In Japanese, with English subtitles.

Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

Times-rated: Family.