A Snake of June Movie Review

Bullet Ballet director Shinya Tsukamoto turns to perversity and blackmail with the oddly titled A Snake of June, a black and white (or more accurately, blue and white) mystery that will first catch your eye, then have you scratching your head.

It starts with a demure Japanese woman who receives a letter in the mail, inscribed "Secrets of your husband." Inside are photographs of her in a tart outfit and -- gasp -- wearing makeup. Hubby wouldn't approved, so when the blackmailer calls on her cell phone, ordering her to go buy a vibrator and lock herself in a bathroom stall with it, she obliges.

This is just the beginning of the shenanigans, and even though the movie runs a brief 77 minutes, there's plenty of sexual strangeness in store.

By the halfway mark, sadly, A Snake of June has turned into a bizarre mess of random images and drug-addled scenes that may or may not be intended as literal. Are there really two girls locked in a circular tank that's filling with water? Did that guy really dump blood all over that guy's head? Tsukamoto is content to turn this into a mind trip (just look at the cover photo if you want more proof), and he forgets to tell a coherent story. Any notion of Snake commenting on sexual repression in Japan is lost amid the nonsense.

Aka Rokugatsu no hebi.