Taboo

A further, captivating extension of Oshima's marriage of the oblique and the erotic.

Emblematic of the man's (Oshima) career: ironic, ambiguous, sublime.

An action film at once baroque and austere, hypnotic and opaque.

Oshima, directing his first film in 14 years, has found an actor with the physical attributes to play the character and seems content to leave it at that; his camera regards Sozaburo as an object of beauty but hardly seems to engage him.

Ripe with homoeroticism, but also with what the director — who made the film after recovering from a stroke a few years back — calls "the scent of murder."

Walks the line between conviction and camp with a not entirely steady step.

A difficult, ambiguous film.