Pastoral Hide and Seek 1974

Pastoral Hide and Seek 1974
Den-en ni shisu (original title)
1h 44min | Drama, Fantasy | 28 December 1974 (Japan)

Storyline:

A young boys’ coming of age tale set in a strange, carnivalesque village becomes the recreation of a memory that the director has twenty years later.

User review:

Few films are as audacious and unrelentingly imaginative as this one. Set in a dreamlike rural Japan, the story starts out to be about an adolescent boy’s attempt to escape his overprotective mother and then surprisingly becomes a filmmakers desire to confront his own elaborated creation. There is also an effort to reconcile the individual with the collective or old and new Japan through this parade of emblematic images. Gossiping women wear sinister eye patches. An outcast simple-minded woman drowns her own baby and later returns as a sophisticated prostitute. A circus fat lady yearns to have her fake body inflated by a dwarf. Curious and astounding scenes abound, all contributing to an overwhelming experience of a creative mind interrogating itself.

Director: Shûji Terayama
Writer: Shûji Terayama
Stars: Kaoru Yachigusa, Keiko Niitaka, Masumi Harukawa
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Release Date: 28 December 1974 (Japan)
Also Known As: Pastoral Hide and Seek
Filming Locations: Mutsu, Aomori, Japan