Review of With Beauty and Sorrow

WITH BEAUTY AND SORROW / WITH BEAUTY AND SADNESS (UTSUKUSHISA TO KANASHIMI TO). Viewed on Streaming. Restoration/ preservation = ten (10) stars; cinematography and lighting = ten (10) stars; costume design = eight (8) stars; subtitles = four (4) stars; score/music = two (2) stars. Director Masahiro Shinoda 's tale of bisexual affairs and pathological revenge involves a young art student engulfed in a lesbian relationship with her teacher/mentor, a well-known abstract painter of women. The painter's lingering romantic feelings for the middle-age man who impregnated her when she was a teenager (the result was a still-born baby) eventually causes her student to grow insanely (literally) jealous and to take corrective action. The lover of long ago has become a successful writer with a college-student son and a long suffering wife who has endured the serial affairs of her prominent husband (which often form the narratives for his books). Members of this semi stable family become the targets of the unstable art student. Shinoda has taken a ho-hum soap-opera plot (filled, as usual, with unhappy characters) and turned it into a suspense-filled psycho drama where the actions of the art student may be unpredictable, but always down right scary! The story (at least for now) ends after the art student has seduced the writer and his son, murdered the son (by drowning), and seems poised to also terminate the writer "with extreme prejudice"! This is a tour de force for stunning actress Mariko Kaga as the art student. Why her character easily attracts admirers of both sexes is overly obvious. Although Shinoda's film is essentially a two-actresses photo play, Kaga's performance manages to covers 1.5 of them! Distinguished character actress Haruko Sugimura plays the painter's mother. (Always a treat to see her in action!) Restoration/preservation is outstanding. Cinematography (2.35:1, color) and lighting are excellent. Costume designs of kimono look gorgeous in color. Subtitles are way too long and look like textbook/ automated translation of Kansai-ben line readings. What's sorely lacking is a translator who is Kensai-ben fluent! Music consists mostly of faint Noh background singing which could be easily dispensed with, since it has little/no impact. Recommended. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.