Black Rose Mansion (1969)

A mysterious woman arrives in an upper class community carrying a black rose, which she declares to be a symbol of love - she believes that when she finds true love it will turn red. Many men fall for her, declaring her to be their true love, but her roses remains stubbornly black.

BLACK ROSE MANSION is a strange, cryptic film, richly symbolic and only loosely flirting with narrative. it is a meditation on the possibility of true love, or the price of pursuing it, a little like a colourful fever dream or perhaps a visual poem.

Kinji Fukasaku certainly contained multitudes, this isn't the sort of film I'd have expected from him at all (though I'm far from an expert on his work. It seems more like the sort of film I'd expect to have Seijun Suzuki's name attached to it, though I'm even less well versed in his filmography (perhaps it's finally time to address that).

This is certainly a fascinating film, one of those reminders that the medium is a lot more malleable than most films or filmmakers would lead you to believe. It sort of feels like a film that Pedro Almodovar might have directed in the 1980's.

It's also just refreshing to see a film where true love is the villain.