SLIMANE DAZI, DAMIEN BONNARD, KO SHIMASAKI IN SERPENT'S PATH

KIYOSHI KUROSAWA: SERPENT'S PATH (2024) JAPAN CUTS 2025

Relentless cruelty in response to horrific evil, in France

The film is interesting for being the director's remake, set in France, of his own 1998 film. It is rare that a director has the authority and funding (as well as the versatility and energy) to remake his own film. The 2025 JAPAN CUTS series also includes the 1998 original, allowing for us to compare the two versions. However the prolongued display of meanness and cruelty of this newer film tends to diminish one's enthusiasm for going over the original as well.

The underlying subject is one of the most evil behaviors known to man: child trafficking, chiefly for organ donation. The meandering action focuses largely on the French father of a brutally murdered and dismembered child and an extraordinarily cold blooded Japanese woman with training as a psychotherapist who accompanies and encourages him as he seeks retribution for the crime. One after another they capture and torture various individuals, eventually killing them. The corpses slowly mount up. A lot of this transpires in a large abandoned warehouse, where the victims' pitiful cries go unheard.

In his September 2024 Variety review, Guy Lodge points out this was the prolific Kurosawa's third feature to premiere in this same year. (One of the ways he is able to work so fast is by using his own familiar team and cast members he looks on as "friends," but in the switch to France, he was challenging himself.)

Lodge calls this self-remake "coldly compelling." He compares the Japanese director to Hitchcock, who also did remakes of his own work. Kurosawa, Lodge writes "is the kind of tireless genre craftsman who seems to approach every feature as a test of his own proficiency." And Serpent’s Path, he says, "a brisk, harsh and, yes, clinically professional update of his own 1998 thriller of the same title, passes said test without a moment’s strain."

Well, this may be true, and admirable enough if something "clinically professional" is what we are looking for. However, there are obvioius shortcomings in the tale Kurosawa is telling here, however good a self-remake it may be. There seems little progresson in the meandering brutality of the action. The randomness of it is undeerlined by the fact that the bereaved French father is largely at the mercy of the arbitrary manipulation of his chilly Japanese guide, who herself shifts aims on a dime with apparent randomness. It's hard not to feel manipulated ourselves as we watch. There is also the fact that the mastermind of the evil organization, Deborah, described as superior to everyone else and "charismatic," the person that Lola (Vimala Pons) declares herself unable to live up to, never appears, so its as if the real protagonist is missing.

But what Kurosaws is making here is basically not so much a crime film as a horror film, only with, for a Japanese dirctor, an exotic and sophisticated new western setting. There are good actors, notablly the main French ones, Matthieu Amalric, Greegoire Colin and Slimane Dazi (of Audiard's Un Prophète), as Laval, Guerin, and Christian, not to mention the strong presence of Damien Bonnard as Albert, the lumpish but emotionally riveting aggrieved father, and the memorably relentless and chillly Kô Shibasaki as Sayoko, his constant partner and goad. I won't soon forget seeing the durable Amalric and Colin subjected to abuse and humiliation, and the form it takes. Kurosawa undoubtedly achieves an edge here, even if this is a totally dislikable film.

Serpent's Path, 112 mins., opened in Japan Jun. 14, 2024. International premierre at San Sebastian Sept. 21. Screened for this review as part. of Japan Cuts (Jul. 10-20, 2025). SHOWTIME:
Thursday, July 17, 2025
6:00 pm with director Q&A

_________________
©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.