Kon Ichikawa:
Kagi - Odd obsession
Starring:
Ganjiro Nakamura - Kenji Kenmochi
Junko Kano - Toshiko Kenmochi
Machiko Kyô - Ikuko Kenmochi
Tatsuya Nakadai - Kimura
Kyu Sazanka - Curio dealer
Mantarô Ushio - Dr. Kodama
Ichirô Sugai - Masseur
Produced by Masaichi Nagata
Original music by
Yasushi Akutagawa
Cinematography by
Kazuo Miyagawa
Writing credits
Keiji Hasebe
Kon Ichikawa
Junichirô Tanizaki (novel Kagi)
Natto Wada
(Also known as "The Key" or "Odd Obsession")
Japan 1959
Cruel twists and turns in human life and strange passions which often leads one to destruction.
Introduction
The movie is based on great Junichiro Tanizaki's novel "Kagi - The key" which is intimate description of 
Japanese couple whose marriage is in crises. When we talk about movie which is based on someone's novel, first question that comes is that whether the movie is loyal to the original idea and message of the novel. I wish I could have better news for you, my dear readers, but this movie isn't really following Tanizaki's idea about showing sexual passions as somehow mindfull or at least understandable human behaviour. Instead the movie shows them as sick, somewhat twisted, which is fighting with the very point of the novel. Those who have read the book, didn't really praise the movie.
Kenji Kenmochi is old art researcher who's marriage is lacking sexual passion. When his wife Ikuko meets young doctor Kimura, he finds himself excited by the feeling of jealousy. They start to drink together almost every night since then, but since Ikuko can't really stand alcohol, she faints in bath. This offers chance to Kenji to engage taking nude photos of his wife while she's unconsious. But what delivers a shock to Kenji is that during his wife is unconsious, she sees dreams about Kimura..
The family is out of income, and Kenji decides to borrow some valuable art pieces from his colleague. He does this to attract Kimura by faking his wealth, to marry his daughter. He is very well aware that his daughter Toshiko doesn't really love him, so his true intensions are more like keeping Kimura visiting their place often. He feels himself young again when he engages into sexual pleasures when his wife is unconsious, but soon, his condition starts weaken. He goes to doctor to find that his bloodpressure is off the scale. Also, his doctor advices him to steer clear of any kind of stressfull activities (including sex). Since he is unable to do that, he get's a paralysis.
The characters of movie left me lots of questions. Kenji is seen as old strange man who's only interest is to have sex, and Kimura instead is selfish man who follows Kenji's wishes in order to have his supposedly large heritage.
Another interesting character is the housekeeper who's apparently color blind. She can't tell a difference between red and green jar, which one contains cockroach poison and one polishing powder. The intensions of the housekeeper leaves me out of answers though, it might be that her intension is to keep Kimura out from the family. The movie, however, shows housekeeper as only sane member of the family, though she is part of the movie's drastic end. The movie also contains some rather funny scenes (like the one when Kimura makes love with Toshiko). Nowadays these visual metaphors are too apparent and obvious, but seeing them in this kind of old film is rather interesting. The movie's directing is also otherwise very visual. There's lots of visual energy involved, as well as shocking effect of Kenji's strange passions when he takes nude pictures of his wife.
Indeed, this movie suffers from it's overdramatic, unacceptable end which cuts the movie, leaving viewer to see the characters as weird sickos, which is very opposite from the novel. Still, good actors and actresses and interesting screenplay makes this film worth to see.
See also: Kagi at IMDB.
