Directed by Seijun Suzuki • 1991 • Japan
Starring Kenji Sawada, Yoshio Harada, Tomoko Mariya

After over a decade in the wilderness following his firing from Nikkatsu, maverick director Seijun Suzuki returned with a vengeance with the Taisho Trilogy, an acclaimed triptych of cryptic supernatural dramas set during the liberal enlightenment of Japan's Taisho Era (1912–26). The final installment of the series (following ZIGEUNERWEISEN and KAGERO-ZA), YUMEJI imagines the real-life painter-poet Yumeji Takehisa’s encounter with a beautiful widow with a dark past. Rarely seen outside of Japan, the films in the Taisho Trilogy are considered Suzuki’s masterpieces in his homeland. Presenting a dramatic turn from his more familiar tales of cops, gangsters and unruly youth, these surreal psychological puzzles capture the pandemonium of a bygone age of decadence and excess, when Western ideas, fashions, technologies, and art began to be assimilated into traditional Japanese culture.