Nagisa Oshima has the reputation for being one of the most controversial and cutting edge filmmakers to emerge in Japan during the early sixties. Unlike his contemporaries, Oshima’s films do not invite any easy genre label, but stand alone as modernist portraits of a society in trouble; plagued by social unrest. In fact, if one were to seek a general approximation of Oshima’s style during the sixties in western filmmaking, one would have to turn to Jean-Luc Godard. But Oshima differs from Godard greatly in terms of filmic reflexivity. One of his most experimental film of the period, Four Resurrected Drunkards (1968) ignores opportunities to analyze its medium in a formal regard, and only occasionally takes a leap into the Japanese cultural consciousness (this is accomplished by incorporating battle front photography, and the re-enactment of pictured scenarios by the films three main characters, of the Vietnam War). In this regard, Oshima opts for a more overt statement on the Vietnam War than Godard, who prefers to mask it within his narrative and the criticism of the medium, which works as Godard’s primary narrative device.
The parallels continue, but with a healthy and constant divergence, as if the filmmakers were moving in the same direction but on parallel tracks. In Oshima’s earlier film, Cruel Story Of Youth (1960), the American genre of rebellious teenagers, à la Rebel Without A Cause (1955), is addressed. Oshima avoids the formal trappings of the genre and creates a more mature character based structure that functions secondarily as a cautionary tale. Oshima tackles a visual style that is highly sensuous, employing a color palette akin to Raoul Coutard’s photography in Godard’s Contempt (1963). Oshima prefers to lend a visual sensuality to the graphic sensuality of the characters, but also to juxtapose the violent nature of the prostitution his characters engage in. Godard on the other hand manipulates his color palette not only to visually mark the three-act structure; to reference the plasticity of the movie image.
If one were to watch Oshima’s 1983 film Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence in succession with Violence At Noon (1966), they hardly seem the work of the same director. The quick edits, the jump cuts, etc. have all been relegated to support the narrative, and more importantly, as subtle visual cues for the audience when it comes to character depictions. The scripts of the later films, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence in particular, are more focused on a few isolated themes, as well as being heavily concentrated on character. The relationship between the Bowie and Sakamoto characters is one of the most articulate of ambiguous relationships to fill the silver screen. Three years later, in 1986, Oshima’s Max Mon Amour would again focus on a strong, often ambiguous relationship, but via the Brechtian tactics of his earlier works Four Resurrected Drunkards and Sing A Song Of Sex (1967).
Max Mon Amour is focused on the marriage between an English diplomat in Paris named Peter Jones (Anthony Higgins) and his wife Margaret (Charlotte Rampling) once she has taken a chimpanzee as her lover. While Margaret’s affair represents a kind of primal utopia, Peter’s experience of the affair is consistently undermined by those around him; society at large. Within this romantic complex Oshima makes allusions to Eugene O’Neil’s The Hairy Ape, King Kong (1933), and All That Heaven Allows (1955). Oshima’s style in Max Mon Amour is theatrical; as if all the drama exists under the idyllic gloss of Raoul Coutard’s cinematography and can only be hinted at by the sedated gestures of an intoxicated automaton.
In one of the first key scenes in Max Mon Amour Peter meets with a private investigator (Pierre Étaix) whom he has hired to determine if his wife Margaret is having an affair. By casting filmmaker Pierre Étaix, Oshima immediately imbues both the character of the detective and the very notion of the private investigator profession with all of the baggage of Pierre Étaix’s filmography. So immediately the audience sees Pierre Étaix’s detective as an ineffective clown, imagining all sorts of clownish antics going on in pursuit of the answer to Peter’s one vital question: “Is Margaret having an affair?”. Of course, Étaix’s answer is “I don’t know”. Then, the scene’s punchline. Just as Peter’s interview with the detective comes to an end his assistant Camille (Diana Quick) enters with the news that they are to prepare for Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Paris.
Now that Peter is more determined than ever to find out if Margaret is having an affair Oshima’s film becomes about observation without ever seeing. First, Peter finds Margaret in bed with Max at a two-room apartment she’s rented. Then, Max moves in and Peter sees the relationship between Max and Margaret is “love”. Now all that is left for Peter is to see Max and Margaret in the act of intercourse.
As Peter becomes more consumed in his quest to “see” and to “know”, the friends and colleagues around him begin to feel the effects of Margaret’s affair. Slowly, the entire Jones family unit descends further and further into the realm of the absurd. Peter hires a hooker for Max so that he can watch, then Camille introduces Peter to a zoologist who desires to “study” Margaret’s intercourse with Max, after which Peter attempts to shoot Max. This dramatic escalation is only halted when Margaret leaves the equation, temporarily, to visit her mother. Margaret’s absence causes Max to stop eating and his health decline, which draws on Peter’s sympathy; establishing a kinship between Margaret’s lovers. All that is left then is for all parties to reunite.
As the narrative is resolved, all of Paris seems to flock towards the Jones’ car as Max rides triumphantly on the roof. People cheer, they wave, they accept this charming children’s book spectacle for what it is only in the most superficial terms. In the following scene, Margaret confides in Peter over breakfast that she has had a dream where the police come and take Max away. This final scene suggests just how fragile the illusion of the previous sequence truly is; how fleeting marital utopia is.
In Oshima’s films the taboo is often the measure of acceptance within a romantic complex. In The Realm Of Senses (1976) and Pleasures Of The Flesh (1965) each take a similar position where a taboo can be either embraced by a character and accepted by those around them or, as is often the case, the taboo can be a character’s total undoing. In Max Mon Amour Margaret can break the taboo of beastiality as long as it remains a secret.
When critics and audiences write about Max Mon Amour it is often as a minor work by Oshima. This is curious to me because Max Mon Amour is such a strong cohession of Oshima’s different styles. The concerns of the film and its narrative context speak to the great humanism and spirituality on display in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence and Empire Of Passion (1978) while also incorporating the post-modern impulses of Oshima’s output of the 1960s. It may just be that the taboo at the heart of Max Mon Amour is too potent for most audiences to see how it functions as metaphor.
