Warm Water Under a Red Bridge

by Anna Pulley

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (Shohei Imamura 2001)

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge is a deceptively titled film that evokes something more akin to a Lifetime miniseries than a film about uncouth (I’m trying to avoid using the word “zany”) female sexuality in a small, seaside town. In this pleasantly disturbing tale, Yosuke, a cuckolded, out of work husband and businessman is on a quest for a golden Buddha statue that his recently deceased shanty buddy had told him about shortly before croaking. Once in the fishing town, he finds Saeko, a quiet, provincial girl shoplifting cheese while hopping a little from foot to foot in a puddle of water that came from her va-jay-jay. The unsuspecting viewer might assume that she had just pissed herself, but not Yosuke, who runs to the spot she’s just vacated, picks up her earring from the puddle and chases after her. Saeko invites him in to the defunct candy factory that used to be her family’s livelihood, where her and her prophetic yet senile grandmother now live. After some stilted attempts from Yosuke to make small talk, Saeko seduces him with the cheese she’s just pilfered and then hurls herself on top of him. (She stole that move from me. Bitch.) This is where we learn that Saeko is part garden hose and she must release the water that fills up inside her by doing something “wicked” (like stealing cheese) or through orgasm.

Playfully eccentric, the film espouses a mythical notion of the power of female sexuality as both a life-force and, paradoxically, a leech-like poison to male virility. As Saeko and Yosuke begin to have regular sexual trysts, Yosuke begins to find it harder and harder to maintain his erection. Fantastic camera placements keep these scenes PG, but they are some of the funniest moments in the film. While Warm Water is marketed as a comedy, a lot of the humor seemed unintentional or perhaps Imamura is just that good. The characters of the town are bursting with mock hilarity – from the skinny mafia kid who only wears turtlenecks and chases his Flashdance-inspired girlfriend around on his moped, to the African man training for the Olympics and his coach who hits him with a plastic bat whenever he slacks off, there was certainly no shortage of absurdity to giggle about. Underneath the extreme vaginal flooding, which is often seen as a source of shame for women (and that’s not from women who can produce enough fluid to supplement Shamu’s holding tank), there’s a theme of empowerment that comes across. Saeko is revered at the same time she is abhorred and her spouting has lured many men into her kiddie pool. And in the end (spoiler!) we learn that the “Golden Buddha Statue” is really a metaphor for the water sports that Saeko and Granny both share. But Yosuke discovers love too, after his wife divorces him and he gets into a ridiculous fight with a disco pantsuit type who wants to pimp on his lady’s waterslides. The fight scene is about fifteen minutes long and it is hysterical. Especially when Turtleneck Mafia joins in, and they bust through a door of a brothel and a pantsless dude gets in on the action as well.

So perhaps there is a little bit of Lifetime in Warm Water but it’s bawdy enough that you can ignore the “morals” of the story if you want and just focus on the sex and the turtlenecks. There is plenty of both to last the two hours and the “special effects” alone will stay with you far longer than you want them to. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to find some cheese.

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