MADAME O

It's easy -- perhaps too easy -- to wax enthusiastic about independent DVD companies who specialize in rescuing cult rarities. Obscure movies are often forgotten for good reason; they weren't worth preserving, sporting underdeveloped plots and weak characters. Thankfully, Synapse Films shows taste and discrimination with many of their projects. Madame O, their recent offering, is a sado-masochistic shadow play of tragedy and exploitation. While not a masterpiece, suffering from overly long lapses of indecision and filler, this movie is easily worth your time as both a historically important template of an entire sub-genre and serious drama. Exploring such controversial cultural themes as deviant sexuality, rape, and revenge within a subtext of the medical profession and family structure, the film still shocks as intelligent and emotionally powerful exploitation. Produced by Aubudon Films, who found a niche filling grind houses with erotic foreign titles, Madame O was a stylish, psychologically harsh experience, and retains its ability to excite and repulse. The story emphasizes the warped sensibilities of its anti-heroine, and the atmosphere effectively wraps audiences into an atmosphere that is sterile one moment and richly sensual the next. This prime example of the 60's 'roughie' walks the tightrope between genre and art house, merging viscera with sensitivity. Directed by Seiichi Fukuda, this forerunner of 'Pinky Violence' pictures has been lovingly preserved by Synapse.

Madame O is a tightly plotted is simplistic tale of rape and revenge. The simplicity helps focus the emotional effects, giving the story a unity and archetypal resonance that similar films lack. The basic rape-revenge-madness outline is lent further dimension by a subtext of women's suffering/victimization, a theme that, combined with the film's bold criticism of male domination, adds substance to the crass exploitation without weakening the sensationalist sex and violence that first grabs our attention. Seiko, a now respected physician, is a morally ambiguous and unrepentant anti-heroine. She immediately tells us of her youthful tragedies via fragmented exposition/flashbacks, which center on her rape by three boys on a beach. This attack leaves her pregnant, infected with syphilis. It isn't any surprise that she detests men and spends her time lurking the streets for sexual partners that she can administer a little personal justice to. When she marries a decent husband, her life improves and her rage subsides . . . until she suspects that he has a secret that will destroy them both.

Sordid, sexy, and tragic Madame O is almost a textbook example of how to merge paradoxical themes and sensations into a challenging, lyrical whole. Ugliness and beauty, pain and pleasure are juxtaposed for optimal effect, with each experience/style bleeding into the other. Sex and violence are bravely (for the time) married by images that force the audience to search their own moral compass. Seiko is both victim and victimizer, arousing both sympathy and fear. Themes of familial dynamics, cultural prejudice, and sexual warfare are handled with intensity and restraint, keeping it from being overly melodramatic. Director Selichi Fukuda never allows his style or the themes to overshadow character, washing the grimly realistic potboiler in tones of naturalism. Jarring black and white imagery clashes with sensual skin-hued eroticism, each representing the psychological context of the action. This is the sort of exploitation picture that appeals to the sensation seeker AND dramatist, with disturbing action and serious characterization wrapped tight around a plot that moves at a satisfying pace.. A French Noir influence is evident in the photography and disquieting atmosphere. Another intriguing aspect of this once 'lost film' is the bridge its content/visuals span between the worlds of classic cinema and modern genre. Classical pathos mirrors the Greek tragedies of old while jarring moments of bloodshed and nudity foreshadow the modern genre. This movie is just another reason to support specialty DVD companies, and yet another nod to the debt that stateside genre films of later decades owed to Asian cinema.

Synapse presents Madame O in a surprisingly good condition (considering the rarity and age), making one think that Audubon must have preserved it with some foresight towards prosperity. The DVD is in anamorphic scope, and the image quality crisp and clean. Colors bleed with the sensuality of sweating flesh and dripping blood, earthy and realistic. Skin tones are naturalistic. Audio is proficient and the dubbing convincing. The Dolby Digital 2.0 track is crisp and reliable without background pops or other examples of interference. Extras include the US Theatrical Trailer and Liner Notes that examine the movie's troubled history. Of further interest is the information they uncover about the director.

Review by William Simmons