Watcher in the Attic

A year or two ago I was looking for novels by Edogawa Rampo, but almost nothing was still in print or else secondhand and cost more than your average home; yet I managed to finally find one anthology that contained  a series of stories and essays, one of which was Watcher in the Attic, the source upon which the film is loosely based. (A note for those after his novels, Penguin recently re-released three of them).

This is the 1976 adaptation and before you ask yes it is one of Nikkatsu's Roman Porno films...

Living off his family, Goda (Renji Ishibashi) rooms in a Tokyo house, whose attic he roams, watching the inhabitants. Spotting a woman, Minako (Junko Miyashita) driven up in an expensive car and enter, he spies into her room and witnesses her sexual encounter. In turn, seeing his eye in the ceiling, Minako enjoys his attention and the two become drawn together.  

For the second time in a week I had a strong sense of cinematic deja vu, but in this case I may be correct because Watcher in the Attic was previously released (alongside A Woman Named Sada Abe, made by the same director, Noboru Tanaka) by HB Films. Had I seen it before? I'll probably never know (I do have two of HB films prior Roman Porno releases, the one named before and Street of Joy) but those releases were pretty poor prints, this is a gorgeous one, deserving of the HD treatment.  

But let’s get into the film because right from the start it very lives up to Edogawa Rampo’s genre of ero guro nansensu, opening with Minako’s sexual encounter with a man dressed as a Pierrot (a stock character from French panto). She is getting her kicks where she can, and her kicks are not of the usual kind. Equally Goda is watching, getting his kicks voyeuristically. He also watches the deeply religious Christian who is happy to abuse the maid in the hopes of saving her, and his other neighbour, an artist that treats people as art.  

As such the first half of the film is really quite beautifully shot – and I mean it really is – but it feels like a series of vignettes. These are engaging to watch and thankfully never just a series of sex scenes, but the film initially lacks an element of cohesion and it is not until broadly the mid-point where it all starts to fall into place. This lack of cohesion stops the film from being a great film, not just a great roman porno. Yet it is always fascinating, because what we see on screen is never just sex, there is always the Rampo-esque investigation of what drives people to obscure, perverse passions. Equally, we are given hints as to Minako's past and current life that makes you realise why and who she is, something that matters deeply in light of how the film ends.

And the perverse is where the film really shines, the servant who is sat within the chair upon which Minako sits. It works because she is in control of this, she is not a victim; what she desires is something that she allows to exist. True, it is suggested as the film progresses that she is the daughter of a very wealthy family who has perhaps been made to marry someone less wealthy (though they seem pretty well off) and has been made to suffer indignities due to this, but similar to the protagonist of Masumura's recently released Play it Cool, she has control regardless of the situation and is not a victim. This provides a refreshing angle and stops any potential, nigh probable, misogyny from creeping into the film.  

The odd thing about the film is perhaps that the titular story is what stops it from reaching its full potential. Not that Rampo’s story is bad, far from it, rather the film tries to cram in aspects of the story and then take it in different directions, and often these disparate avenues are those that work best because unlike the story where you have Rampo’s prose, the film feels as described before, as a bit disparate in the first half, yet when it comes together, when Minako and Goda find each other and we start to understand their true characters, the film feels complete.

When this happens the film doesn’t so much hit its stride as goes full erotic grotesque nonsense and it is all the better for it. It’s powerful, but strangely understandable and bizarrely compelling, in part because it is almost matter of fact about it; there is no compact between these two characters, instead they understand each other’s desires and play them out so disturbingly. This is never shown as soft-core nonsense, either.  

One of the problems of discussing Watcher in the Attic is that to properly describe what the effect of it is, it's easy to unintentionally give away too much of the story and the memorable moments the film presents. Yet at its best it is a startling, remarkable film, including the very ending, which at first may seem like almost a deus ex machina (though it made me think of the moment of the lover’s final meeting in Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair) but it isn’t in the least.  

Visually, the film seems almost unusually well filmed. It has a formality to it, and the imagery, especially Minako walking into view with her parasol, is careful, precise, even when at its maddest. Like Woods are Wet (though Woods are Wet is arguably the better film) Watcher in the Attic reminds you why you should watch 88 Films Roman Porno series because this is not about sex, nudity and uncontrolled writhing of oft yawn-worthy passion but something deeper, more interesting, more disturbing, perverse and often just downright fascinating.