Crazed Fruit (1956) - Japanese film

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I would recommend this film because it was extremely entertaining but for the wrong reasons. It is about two brothers who fall in love with the same (married) woman. The woman loves the younger, inexperienced brother but sleeps with the older, experienced one. This relationship drives the brothers mad and desperate.

This film attempts to be dramatic but it just isn't at all. It's silly. There are moments when you literally just want to laugh because they are so awkwardly done or drawn out too long. Maybe drama and suspense is a learned thing so, from a modern western perspective, this style seems odd but to the audiences of the time it worked. You can see on the poster how awkward one of the main characters is and I think that this is down to bad acting, rather than the character.

The story is quite silly. The boys are annoying because it is the typical testosterone, Cain and Abel type stuff which is quite boring. The main female character is also bizarre because she seems to do so many things without motivation. She is 'enticed' by the bad-boy older brother who sees to repeatedly rape her. She is married to an older American man and this relationship is never explained. She also likes the naivety of the younger brother and yet also likes the maturity of the older brother, so she just likes anything.

Normally Japanese films are at least well filmed, they're interesting and beautiful. This film was even awkwardly filmed. There were really odd close shots of some of the characters when they were talking, and not during key scenes or anything, just randomly. There also wasn't a lot of the landscape except the sea, because a lot of things happened within houses or bars. It just seems pointless to make a rubbish film and not even make it pretty.

Over-all it was entertaining and could be watched with a few friends to laugh at, but I would suggest a different film unless you really want to try something different. It is just too different from what we are used to from Western films and from what I would expect from a Japanese one.