Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (1972)
Where’s it on? BFI Player
BFI Player’s Japan collection got a whole lot gnarlier this week with the addition of a fistful of lurid exploitation titles of the 1960s and 70s. We’re a long way from Ozu in the hallucinatory eroticism of Atsushi Yamatoya’s Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands (1967) and Teruo Ishii’s Orgies of Edo (1969), while Nobuhiko Obayashi’s legendarily loopy haunted-house movie Hausu (1977) exists on a cinematic planet of strangeness all its own. Then there’s Shunya Ito’s artily aberrant 1972 directorial debut, Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion, an outrageously sleazy women-behind-bars movie that introduced the floppy-hatted avenger Scorpion to the world, leading to a four-film franchise. Fresh from the Stray Cat Rock series, Meiko Kaji plays the woman who is double-crossed by her detective boyfriend and thrown into a women’s prison, enduring ceaseless torments at the hands of the sadistic guards before escaping to wreak revenge.
Lynn + Lucy (2019)
Where’s it on? BFI Player
This penetrating first feature makes the case for Leicester filmmaker Fyzal Boulifa as the new kid on the block in British social realist cinema. Made off the back of his award-winning shorts, Lynn + Lucy centres on two friends whose close bond from childhood is beginning to show signs of strain as they face up to the challenges of being adults. Lynn (newcomer Roxanne Scrimshaw) has been a full-time mother since becoming pregnant at 16, and is over the moon for the more carefree Lucy (Nichola Burley) when she has her first child too. But Lucy’s reaction to the pressures of motherhood is less assured, and Boulifa masterfully conveys the off-camera horror that leads the local neighbourhood to turn their backs on her amid whispers and suspicion. Lynn + Lucy is undeniably harrowing at its core, but it’s rooted in a study of an uneven friendship that rings bracingly true.
Scorsese Shorts (1963-78)
Where’s it on? Blu-ray
From two feature debuts, we move on to the early shorts of one of the world’s most famous directors. This new Criterion set brings together Martin Scorsese’s initial trio of 1960s miniatures with two mid-length documentaries he made in the 1970s. Shot in black and white and on 16mm, his student films What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place like This? (1963) and It’s Not Just You, Murray (1965) are both brimful of formal invention, revealing a young filmmaker full of ideas if still in thrall to vogueish directors of the time like Fellini and Richard Lester. The Big Shave (1967) is a precocious Vietnam allegory in the form of a squirm-inducingly bloody study of a man shaving. 1974’s indispensable Italianamerican is a wonderfully warm and evocative living-room conversation with Marty’s own parents, while 1978’s American Boy is an anecdote-fuelled sit down with Steven Prince, the actor and former drug addict who’d played the gun salesman in Taxi Driver.
Takeshi Kitano Collection (1989-93)
Where’s it on? Blu-ray
The three yakuza movies that launched TV comedian ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano as a major auteur have been brought together for their Blu-ray debut here. Kitano had been inching his way into cinema via supporting turns in the likes of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) when he surprised everyone by taking over directing reigns from Kinji Fukasaku on the revenge saga Violent Cop in 1989 – as Jasper Sharp has written on this site: “A British equivalent might have been if Ben Elton had replaced Michael Winner to direct himself in Death Wish.” Boiling Point followed in 1990, and by Sonatine (1993) Kitano’s films were playing the Cannes Film Festival and getting name-dropped by Tarantino. And for good reason: Sonatine is the yakuza film remodelled as a kind of ambient hang-out movie, seeing a troupe of gangsters sent to tropical Okinawa to await orders. There they wait, whiling away the hours playing games on the beach – in the calm before violence inevitably erupts.
Two Days, One Night (2014)
Where’s it on? BBC2, Sunday, 12.15am
Until the Safdie brothers came along as pretenders to the crown, Belgian frères the Dardennes had cornered the market in urgent, present-tense dramas. Their films are the kind of everyday, out-on-the-streets thrillers that you watch heart-in-mouth and from the edge of your seat, but which are rooted in the pressing real-world concerns of striving characters trying to undo dire situations. Two Days, One Night, which BBC2 have a witching-hour slot for this weekend, is probably their most widely seen film to date, by virtue of having a (stunning) turn from Marion Cotillard at its centre. She plays the young factory worker on the cusp of losing her job who has the weekend to try to convince her colleagues to surrender their bonuses and vote to keep her on. From this simple set-up, the Dardennes spin an unusually nuanced against-the-clock drama that brings a host of competing priorities into play.