Warm Water Under a Red Bridge

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Founded in 2002 as one of the first-ever subscription film services with its DVD-of-the-Month Film Club, Film Movement is now a North American distributor of award-winning independent and foreign films based in New York City. In 2015, Film Movement launched the reissue label Film Movement Classics featuring new restorations released theatrically as well as on home video, with an emphasis on films by auteur directors such as Eric Rohmer, Peter Greenaway and Takeshi Kitano.

Brimming with magical realism, sensuality, and humor, the final film by revered filmmaker Shohei Imamura is "an enlightening, even liberating, experience" (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times) that tells the story of Yosuke Sasano, an unemployed salaryman who arrives in a remote fishing village following a rumor of hidden treasure. Instead, he meets Saeko Aizawa, a charming and unusual woman with a unique problem: a well of warm water inside her longing for release. Saeko faces both shame and adoration for her condition, which the local anglers believe feeds the river and its fish. Intrigued and enamored, Yosuke decides to take up a new life as a fisherman. Through their passionate affair, Imamura paints a picture of longing, fantasy, and the search for true happiness in the most unexpected of places that's both "nonchalantly freaky and uncommonly pleasurable" (Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice).

directed by: Shohei Imamura
starring: Kôji Yakusho, Misa Shimizu
2001 / 119 min / 1.78:1 / Japanese Stereo

Additional info:

• Region A Blu-ray
• Messy and Juicy video essay by author and film curator Tom Vick
• 16-page booklet with new essay by film scholar and writer Hwang Kyunmin
• English subtitles