A Snake of June

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Movie: A Snake Of June
Romaji: Rokugatsu no hebi
Japanese: 六月の蛇
Director: Shinya Tsukamoto
Writer: Shinya Tsukamoto
Producer:
Cinematographer:
Release Date: May 24, 2003
Runtime: 77 min
Language: Japanese
Country: Japan

Plot

Rinko Tatsumi is quiet reserved woman in her mid-thirties. She works as a phone counsellor at an emergency phone line at the county mental health centre. She is a very capable counsellor and her husband Shigehiko is an important businessman. They have no children.

A Snake Of June

It is June, the rainy season in Japan. One humid, uncomfortable day, Rinko receives a strange letter in an envelope inscribed: ‘Your Husband’s Secrets’. Inside she finds photos of herself masturbating.

Rinko and Shigehiko live a comfortable and financially secure life, and have a peaceful, quiet marriage. Shigehiko is a workaholic and an obsessively clean person. He spends all his free time cleaning. At times Rinko feels her husband takes his obsessions too far. Nevertheless, she loves him dearly. He does not touch her, however, and because of his neurotic tendencies they do not share a bed. Since the arrival of the strange letter Rinko starts to feel uneasy and anxious. Even though they do not express their feelings toward each other in a carnal way, Rinko is satisfied with their life – thanks largely to her successful career. But her cosy, familiar life is about to come crashing down like a house of cards. Rinko becomes even more anxious when she receives a phone call from the man who sent the photographs.

Surprisingly, the man does not demand money. Instead he demands that she wears a very short mini skirt that barely covers her pants and that she buy a vibrator. At first she rejects the callers weird instructions. However, the man reveals that he already knows that Rinko has been secretly searching the internet to purchase a vibrator. Feeling compelled to obtain the embarrassing photo negative that the caller has of her, Rinko unwillingly complies with the man’s demands.

In the mean time, the husband Shigehiko finds one of Rinko’s embarrassing photos by chance. From that day on, his peaceful but dull work-oriented life starts to crumble. The man who has been making the demands on Rinko approaches Shigehiko and takes him to a secret club, where he forces him to watch vile and horrible scenes. Shigehiko, who had always thought of himself as a rational man who could control his emotions and urges, now finds his world turned upside down, his loss of control driving him into confusion and loneliness. Who is the man interfering in the lives Rinko and Shigehiko? Can Rinko and Shigehiko, who have slowly been drifting apart, restore the passionate relationship between husband and wife?

Director's Statement

Every year, when the rainy season arrives, I look at the beautiful hydrangea blooms and sigh, "I didn't get to film A SNAKE OF JUNE this year either." It's been like that for 10, maybe, 15 years. At first, it was about a brutal stalker and a housewife, an immoral tale that would make the juices flow in the mouth. But, funnily enough, when it was finished, it had turned into something completely different. You'll have to come and see the movie to find out how different, but the reasons for this difference are many: the stalker's outrageousness; the anger he provokes; my own ageing. To be precise, the finished film was illuminated by a single drawing I did as a child. A picture of a snail on a hydrangea that I did in the lower grade of elementary school was featured in the school newspaper. I don't remember the text, but I was a very shy boy, and it was the first work of mine to receive approval by adults. When I recall that drawing, the transparent blue air around the hydrangea comes back to me. When I came to make this film set in the rainy season, that blue color seemed to set the direction I should take. Within the very extreme of vulgarity, I wanted to see something pure, something beloved, and something noble. While earnestly making my movies from TETSUO to GEMINI, I was chasing the phantom of A SNAKE OFJUNE. The film is both a departure and an arrival. It sings of eroticism, but in fact none of the characters have any physical contact with each other. Instead of the cinemascope size of 'pink films' (soft core films), I thought about not shrinking the screen too much, but of making it square-shaped, one-person size. It tells the story up to the ultimate moment of the only possible contact. In the depths of the city, everyone secretly dries up. If you can hear the faint cries of the characters welling up from the bottom of the darkness, I'll be happy. -- Shinya Tsukamoto