This film is the kind of thing most Americans hate when they think of what is meant by ‘foreign films’ or ‘avant-garde cinema’ – a film too clever by half, too pretentious for its own good.

Double Suicide concerns a paper merchant who falls madly in love with a courtesan (i.e., geisha, i.e. prostitute) despite being married and having a couple of kids. He seems to spend all his profits on the young woman and eventually the affair becomes scandalous. His father-in-law comes to take his wife back home, and his own family shames him and makes him sign a pledge never to see the courtesan again. At the end – as the title indicates – the two lovers run away in the middle of the night, make passionate love one last time, and then kill themselves.

The main thing that makes this movie hard to take is the not-at-all-subtle reference to bunraku, the Japanese puppet theatre. The film’s story itself is based on a famous 18th-century puppet play, but that’s not all: for this film the puppeteers take over. At the very beginning, during the opening credits, we watch various puppeteers and their creations as they get ready for what is apparently an evening’s performance. The voice-over is between, presumably, the director and the screenwriter, discussing the layout of the film itself.

By itself, that bit would by fine, but it gets worse: as the movie begins we see that the puppets themselves have turned into the film’s actors; further, the black-clothed-and-hooded puppeteers (so they can blend with the dark stage background) are skulking around in the real world, unseen and ignored, like ghosts. Occasionally a puppeteer will handle some props or move scenery around – sometimes to make the transition between scenes – and to assist the characters during important, dramatic moments. The effect is unreal and eerie, like watching spirits walk around among the living, gently guiding their actions and by doing so helping them along to their respective fates. That’s the idea, of course – the actors are, after all, still puppets, and need someone to pull their strings and move objects around for them. It’s far too transparent a technique for my taste.

The story itself is interesting, but a bit too much. It all drips with tragedy and inevitability – after all, we know the lovers are going to die at the end anyway. If any of these characters (except the merchant’s devoted wife) could act responsibly, all of the trouble could be avoided. The viewer wants to shout at the screen, “Just shut up and go back to your wife and kids already!” It’s hard to see what the pretty young courtesan sees in the moping, self-loathing Jihei anyway; and she’s cute, sure, but is she worth dying over?

One more artistic conceit in this film – not quite apparent at first – is that both the wife and the courtesan are played by the same actress: Shima Iwashita, the wife of director Shinoda. The only significant difference between the two characters is that as the wife, Iwashita’s teeth are blacked out. I don’t know enough about the culture to know if that’s a theater technique or not.

My advice: see this if you feel you have to, but I think you’re better off watching a samurai film with some good ol’ blood and guts.