Film/Video JAPANESE NEW WAVE CINEMA FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 1999 $6 ($4 WALKER MEMBERS) ADMITS TO BOTH SHOWS AUDITORIUM

SHE AND HE (KANOJO TO KARE)
DIRECTED BY SUSUMU HANI
7 PM
In the elliptical manner of Antonioni, Hani offers a superb psychological portrait of a Tokyo wife driven mad by the forced "happiness" of her middle-class life. Sachiko Hidari, Hani's wife, gives a subtle, moving performance as the "she" of the title. Her monotonous e11stence with her traditional husband in a sprawling, antiseptic apartment complex changes when she encounters a blind girl who is cared for by a ragpicker (both of them played by nonprofessional actors). Winner of two top prizes at the Berlin Film Festival, She and He fuses social concerns with modernist formal strategies. Print courtesy The Japan Foundation, Tokyo. 1963, Japan, 114 minutes.

MANJI (SWASTIKA)
DIRECTED BY YASUZO MASUMURA
9 PM
Audiences in New York, Toronto, and Berkeley recently squealed in delight over this florid, taboo-breaking (and inadvertently hilarious) version of Tanizaki's novel about a lesbian affair. The dutiful, unhappy wife of a lawyer falls in love with a young, mysterious woman she encounters at an art class. Their affair soon involves her husband and the young woman's impotent lover. ("Swastika" was Masumura's reference to the four points of the criss-crossed couples.) Superbly overwrought, full of blackmail, blood oaths, suicide pacts, and kitsch emotions, Manji also offers surprisingly explicit erotica. Little wonder the original English title was All Mixed Up. 1964, Japan, 91 minutes.