Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge Blu-ray Movie Review

Wet and wild.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 23, 2023

In a brief but interesting visual essay included on this disc as a supplemental feature, author and film curator Tom Vick makes a case that Shôhei Imamura, then nearing the end of his life and therefore career, decided to "deconstruct" the very essence of what Vick calls a "fairy tale" in Warm Water Under a Red Bridge. That said, this particular "deconstruction" is completely different from, say, the tweaking of venerable tales that James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim essayed in Into the Woods, and in fact, while often played for kind of goofy laughs, there's a whole spectacularly provocative sexual angle to this film that is a little difficult to write about (at least for a site that may be read by some minors). Suffice it to say that while this film's title may refer to an actual physical location in the city of Himo, Japan that a focal character named Yosuke Sasano (Kōji Yakusho) visits on the hunt for what is more or less hidden treasure, the title pretty clearly also refers to another physical phenomenon, namely the rather pronounced ability of the film's focal female character, Saeko Aizawa (Misa Shimizu), to produce moisture in epic quantities when she's sexually aroused.

While Vick rightly points out that both of these characters are more or less ciphers, despite some of their rather peculiar "defining characteristics", and while there is a bit of backstory afforded to both characters (something that Vick kind of dismisses as not being there), it may not add a ton to a tale that almost plays like a, yes, Grimm's Fairy Tale as adapted by the Playboy Channel. There's actually a bit of biographical data imparted about Yosuke in the film's early moments, and Vick makes the salient point that Shôhei Imamura, who spent much of his film career directing stories about "down and out" types, seems to be dealing with more of a middle class character with regard to Yosuke, though it's almost instantly detailed that due to the economic uncertainties pummeling Japan at this period, Yosuke's lot in life is extremely precarious. That wobbliness is in fact what sets him out on a search for a hidden golden Buddha that an actual destitute man who has died supposedly secreted away by a red bridge.

When Yosuke gets to Himo, he goes to a store where he happens to see Saeko in the process of shoplifting some cheese, something that evidently gets her amorous waters moving, resulting in a large puddle beneath her feet. Yosuke, understandably intrigued by this event, starts up a relationship with Saeko, and let's just say that their sexual encounters are often "showered" with female bodily effluent. This torrent of water actually makes it to the "real" water supply of the town, where it seems to have magical properties and makes the fishing in the river a celebratory activity.

This story is certainly played for some of its allusive elements, though, as Vick points out, in a way it's (aside from the waterworks) a relatively straightforward account of a relationship that gets hot and heavy, cools off a bit, and then rebounds. Imamura may be aiming at some kind of lofty metaphor, but he kind of delivers with a cartoonish ambience.

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Warm Water Under the Bridge is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Film Movement Classics, an imprint of Film Movement, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. There's no technical information that I could find on the cover with regard to either the element utilized or any restoration process. I've had some kind of variable reactions to a number of Film Movement Blu-ray releases, with what to my eyes look at times like gamma and/or luma miscalculations as well as some odd color timing, and that's once again the case here, though only with regard to the grade. As can probably be pretty easily seen in the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review, there's a decidedly yellow cast to virtually the entire presentation, so much so that I'd jokingly say the titular edifice is actually a bit more orange in this rendition. Skies and water can also attain a slightly greenish quality as a result of this yellow tinge, but that said, there are a number of brightly lit outdoor moments where, even if the yellow is still discernable, blues manage to pop through more effectively. Aside from that issue, detail levels are typically very good to excellent throughout the presentation, especially in some of those aforementioned brightly lit outdoor scenes. A couple of night and/or day for night sequences suffer from some crush and inadequate shadow detail, and parts of a black and white flashback sequence also have some crush and less consistent detail. Grain can look a bit coarse at times, but resolves without any major issues.

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge features an appealing LPCM 2.0 track in the original Japanese. Vick mentions some goofy sound effects and the somewhat carnival like score in his visual essay, and both of those elements help to make some of the lunatic sex scenes play more like slapstick than erotica at times. A number of outdoor scenes have appealing ambient environmental background effects. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Messy and Juicy (HD; 9:50) is a visual essay by Tom Vick.


• Trailers include Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (HD; 1:44), along with trailers for other releases from Film Movement.

As with most Film Movement releases, the disc also offers an About Film Movement option on the Main Menu which leads to text about and a trailer for Film Movement. The nicely appointed booklet contains an interesting essay by Hwang Kyunmin.

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge is probably going to shock the more prim and proper, but for those with a certain sense of humor about sexuality and all that it entails may find this "fairy tale" amusing, if never really gripping emotionally. Video has some distinctly yellow grading which I found a bit odd, but audio and the visual essay and written essay in the insert booklet are all enjoyable. With caveats noted, and with your scuba gear hopefully at the ready, Recommended.