Korei

Seance (2000) by Kiyoshi Kurosawa is loosely based on Seance on a Wet Afternoon, a 1961 novel by Mark McShane and, later, a 1964 film by Bryan Forbes. The term "loosely" is not to imply a complete reworking of the source material, since the key plot points involving a troubled marriage, a missing child, and a bizarre ransom scheme, are all there. Kurosawa, however, takes many interesting detours and gives much more heft to the paranormal. Liner notes by Gabe Klinger note that the original title, Korei: Ushirowo miruno, translates into English as Don't Look Back, a telling nod to a masterpiece of horror by Nicolas Roeg, Don't Look Now (1974). Roeg's film also dealt with a missing child, marital tensions, and supernatural events that force us to ask questions about predestination and more, and it imbues the color red with unreal menace - something Kurosawa does well in Seance. But whereas Roeg's universe spirals inward into darker and tighter spaces, Kurosawa's spatial interests are all about the frame and what exists outside of it. Kurosawa's Seance follows a sound engineer (a smart device that allows Kurosawa to accentuate soundtrack issues) and his wife, a woman that police sometimes rely on for psychic clues. When a young girl is kidnapped, the married couple are, at first, oblivious to what will soon become their integral role in the fate of the missing child. That the husband needs to be unnaturally oblivious for a key occurrence involving a suitcase is sure to provide a bone of contention for unforgiving viewers, whereas those willing to put aside logic for a while (and there's no reason not to if you want to really enjoy a ghost story to begin with) will be better rewarded. One of the interesting detours that Kurosawa takes involves a scene wherein the sound engineer (played by Koji Yakusho) encounters his doppelganger. In a separate interview supplied on the Home Vision Entertainment disk, Kurosawa mentions how he'd been thinking about doppelgangers and relates an account of how Catherine the Great of Russia supposedly saw her doppelganger, which is a sign that you will die, and that she set hers on fire in an attempt to defy her death. That Kurosawa should release another film three years later titled Doppelganger, also starring Koji Yakusho, reveals a meta-universe of Jungian proportions that is beyond the scope of this article but, suffice to say for now, Kurosawa is capable of an almost Cronenbergian allegiance to the themes that fascinate him. On an aesthetic level, Kurosawa's fascination with the world of film as being - about creating a world out of these square frames - and wanting to keep "in mind that there's a world outside of what you can see_" - is a primary obsession that can readily be studied in Séance. Each shot feels carefully composed so that mirrors, doors, paintings, halls, all fill the film frame with as many other compositional frames as is possible. There is a strange, almost subliminal effect to this, one that might tickle the unconscious to remind it of how much happens beyond any one selected scene. The other effect this aesthetic has is to deliver a world that is obviously concocted, but by a craftsman with a higher ideal for space than that of the usual filmmaker who is often enslaved to putting all his resources simply toward the service of furthering plot points or creating celebrities. That Seance was shot for television does not diminish its power to deliver powerfully creepy moments and further a unique style and talent, but it does call into question how Kurosawa might have otherwise expanded his abilities to fit a wider canvas. The dvd release for Seance presents the film in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio and includes a brief interview with Kurosawa (10-minutes-long), and the trailers for Seance, Charisma, and Cure. For more information about Seance, visit Home Vision Entertainment. To order Seance, go to TCM Shopping. by Pablo Kjolseth