Review of Lady Snowblood (1973)
Seen in 2025.
A gang of four criminals trick some peasants into paying a made-up fee, which they say will excuse you from the first military draft in the history of Japan. When the village’s new school teacher arrives, the gang kills him to avoid exposure. The teacher’s wife survives and embarks on a multi-generational, ambiguously supernatural quest for vengeance.
It’s a rape-revenge film with an emphasis on hard-boiled but aestheticized, blood-spurting action. Koike Kazuo’s manga original was published in a Japanese knock-off of Playboy. The plot is from The Count of Monte Cristo (1844), but because a middle-aged woman would have challenged sexism, this gender-swapped Edmond Dantès dies in prison and is replaced by a child conceived specifically for vengeance. That child, Yuki, is not a well-developed character like Dantès, but nor is she heavily objectified. The presentation is stylish and includes both a good theme song and a couple of satirical motifs, but there is little beneath the surface. This is all to be expected from the original title, which is a pun: shurayuki-hime (修羅雪姫, “asura snow young-lady”) sounds like shirayuki-hime (白雪姫, “white snow young-lady”, “Little Snow-White”).
References here: Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004).