Funeral Parade of Roses 2

Original title: Bara no sôretsu

Director: Toshio Matsumoto

Cast: Pîtâ, Osamu Ogasawara, Yoshimi Jô

Japan 1969 | Black & White | 105 mins

Avaliable on: DCP, DVD

Also available on Blu-ray

 

Transgender actor Pîtâ gives an astonishing performance as Eddie, hostess at Bar Genet – where she’s ignited a violent love-triangle with reigning drag queen Leda for the attentions of club owner Gonda.

One of Japan’s leading experimental filmmakers, Toshio Matsumoto bends and distorts time, and freely mixes documentary interviews, Brechtian film-within-a-film asides, Oedipal premonitions of disaster, his own avant-garde shorts, and even on-screen cartoon balloons. Funeral Parade of Roses is a celebration of youth and subcultures, a condemnation of intolerance, and a one-of-kind cinematic experience. A kaleidoscopic masterpiece, and one of the most subversive, intoxicating films of the 60s.