Asako is haunted by an ethereal, disembodied voice of a murderer, a ghostly breath heard through thrumming phone lines and relays. Her wrong number makes her a minor celebrity but she’s unable to identify the voice as the police parade the usual suspects before her ears. Three years pass, the crime mostly forgotten, until she hears the voice once again, the cool dark words as electrical impulses jolting her nightmares. Because she now knows who answered the fatal phone call.
Seijun Suzuki splits the film in two, much to its detriment. The first half is brilliant, as we experience the story from Asako’s (Yoko Minamida) feminine perspective, a strong-willed woman who isn’t taken seriously because of her gender even though she can delineate over 300 different voices! She’s patronized and diminished and when the narrative jumps forward three years, embedded in a typical patriarchal marriage where she is relegated to servant. Suzuki skirts these social issues and fails to explore them, as Asako assumes her wifely role without much complaint, supporting her husband even as he wiles away the late hours with mahjong with his cohorts. When she hears the voice of her husband’s buddy Hamazaki (Joe Shishido) ciphered through a phone call, she immediately recognizes it. Suzuki relishes in depicting her lurid nightmares as she races down a long hallway, opening doors and always seeing Hamazaki’s leering visage. The first half builds tension as she wants to tell the police but continues to be ridiculed. Only a journalist who covered the original story seems interested. Will she tell her husband? Will Hamazaki find out? Is she the next target?
Suzuki cuts the film in two, as Asako’s husband stumbles home one rainy night, beaten to a pulp. He has severed ties with Hamazaki and now reveals that he was a courier in a criminal organization, and he has survived a brawl with his employer. However, Hamazaki turns up dead and her husband is arrested for the murder! Suzuki elides the confrontation and now the second half of the film pushes Asako aside and focuses upon the reporter Ishikawa (Hideaki Nitani) and his investigation into her husband’s alibi. He soon suspects that her husband is innocent, and a group of scheming gangsters is responsible, but he must first break their alibis. Suzuki and his DP Kazue Nagatsuka use of rainy streets, low angles, low key lighting, crane and tracking shots is superbly influenced by American film noir tropes. When Suzuki finally depicts the deadly fight elided in the first act, it seems like a violent stage play set amid a sparse set entombed in darkness. His compositions in the coal yards look like a carbonized purgatory. In a neat twist, the denouement relies upon forensic testing, but not of blood or bullets but coal! And he composes a cracked reflection of the terrible triumvirate, forcing Hamazaki to sniff coal dust while they strangle him. Ha!
Though the second act’s pacing slows the film down and Asako is minimized, the film’s trajectory leads to a happy reunion for the married couple.
Final Grade: (B)
