Bumpkin Soup

This blu-ray disc of Bumpkin Soup (aka The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girl) was not my first time with the film, unusually my first experience with this pink film was at the cinema for a one-off screening. At the end of it I was not quite sure what to make of it, and with good reason. Though produced as a pink film, it was shown under the monthly experimental banner and arguments for it to sit in either genre are sound and curious. If anything I’d argue it's a film that is experimental with some nudity (not so much sex), there to sell what is a decidedly unusual film for anyone to market.  

Country-girl, Akiko (Yoriko Doguchi) arrives at a big city university to find Yoshioka (Kenso Kato), whose music she has on tape, and plans to marry. Only she finds herself pulled into the orbit of Prof. Hirayama (Juzo Itami), who has a theory of shame that his students are exploring, and Akiko may be the best subject for his observations..  

Leave all expectations at the door. And arguably watch once and then twice as a second time perhaps gives a better appreciation for a film that is difficult to grasp. Watching Bumpkin Soup there’s the sense that it’s either a lunatic series of vaguely connected skits, or else a film on which one could write a small book. I’ve said before I struggled to watch the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa and one of his earliest, The Guard from Underground enticed me to return to his work and this does too, but worth noting that in many ways I’m an outsider to his films, previously only having really got on with Tokyo Sonata and that was a decade or more ago. So there’s a very specific part of me that cannot contextualise this in terms of his work, but in terms of watching it as a film in its own rights, well, I’ve watched it so I can.

There’s certainly a political edge, which some have related to specific 1960's Godard movies, and knowing that my explorations of 60's Godard normally leaves me chewing glass (OK the last time I tried was nearly 30 years ago...) but you can see a type of 1960's spirit, especially in the band of teenagers, one of whom bangs a pot with a wooden spoon while two men hold up slogans. It's clear that this is cinema and not a reality. It's the director making a point. This is something that we see at the end as well where we see the film crew working.  

Yet you can argue that this is cinema that through artificiality is trying to reflect something that is real. And Bumpkin Soup is a very unreal-real film. It's slippery to grasp and perhaps for those expecting something straightforward, it's a disappointment. However, for those with the eyes to see, it's often fascinating. For all the moments of randomness: why is this woman naked on the sofa, speaking on the phone and simultaneously masturbating? Is it in line with the "shame" aspect the film observes? There are moments, like the music block, the door to which each time has a different composer whose face that covers its window and at one point fingers split those eyes and replace it with someone's within, it's a small but precise visual moment, effective, premeditated, and the film is suffused with intriguing visuals and unexpected cuts, such that you can sense a very strong filmic mind sitting behind the construction of it. All this to say that it's not some lazily shot movie - far from it.  

This leads to an important aspect to the film, music, whether a character singing at the university, the mainly classical soundtrack or the chased but soon ignored Yoshioka being a musician, the use of music is ubiquitous throughout the film, used to heighten the sense of feeling and seems very, very specific in how it's used. This aspect, especially in a film of very modest budget seems necessary and emphasises how you're supposed to feel in the best, but also very in-your-face, way. It's notable that this is a film shot on a shoe-string, the university is obviously a series of abandoned buildings, but none of this matters. Why? Because it fits the film. If Bumpkin Soup had been shot at an actual university, milling with students, it would be too real, rather than the odd tale we are told. Again, it’s a film where artificiality is king, where we don’t expect normalcy and if a hint of normal were to hit us it would feel wrong and prove distracting. This is a film that makes of its burdens and struggles a benefit.  

Equally, there is a strength in the cast. Juzo Itami in his film Tampopo would cast Yoriko Doguchi as the seductive diver selling oysters to the yakuza and both of them here do sterling work. Itami's professor has just the right air of the absurd and it's the kind of role and performance that could easily collapse into a kind of silliness, where he provides an almost seriousness to his investigations into shame, but it's no po-faced performance, rather he's the embodiment of the eccentric academic. Doguchi on the other hand is very much there to underplay, but not be a wallflower. It's a delicate kind of role, because it would be easy for her as Akiko to become a bit lost, a cypher that moves between students, as she often does, and it's true there is an aspect of her role being about her as an actor, a person, a presence, rather than a premeditated character imbued with depth; that said Doguchi has the kind of intriguing screen otherness that perfectly fits the part.

After the second viewing I still don’t know quite what to make of the film, for all its guerilla aspects, it's sideways politics and sexual interludes, but what I can tell you is that you should watch it. Why? Because this is arguably a very controlled piece of directing. You may miss some of the imagery in the first sitting, but it becomes clearer over multiple viewings. If you are interested in cinema that has the power to do something different, you would be missing something unique if you were to ignore this release.