The Mad Fox

If you see only one Uchida film, this should be it; just make sure to clear space on the floor for your jaw. Uchida's reputation as a realist or naturalist is severely tested by this wildly stylized, immensely lovable fable. The Japanese characters for 'Tomu' can be construed as 'to spit out or vomit dreams', and the ever-escalating spillage of visual and narrative invention in The Mad Fox does just that. Its crazy tale about a court fortune teller driven mad by a murder, who ends up marrying his slain lover's dead ringer, a fox in human form (got that?), incorporates animation, kabuki and butoh, colorist experiments, collapsing sets, animal masks, revolving stages, and scroll compositions - never mind anthropomorphism, class warfare, identical twins, a doll baby that makes electronic mewling sounds, and even playful hints of bestiality. The political import of the fable is readily apparent - this is Uchida, after all - but the film's extravagant artifice all but swamps it. As the Scope image swims in deepest incarnadine or blooms into Van Gogh yellow, or a close-up holds on the fox bride madly lapping at her husband's wound, the topsy-turvy world of The Mad Fox leaves one feeling like the character who exclaims: 'I am in confusion unto madness.' (JQ)