This Japanese oddity was written and directed by Atsushi Yamatoya, who’s best known on these shores for his contributions to the screenplay of Seijun Suzuki’s infamously bonkers 1967 yakuza pastiche BRANDED TO KILL. DUTCH WIFE IN THE DESERT (KOYA NO DACCHI WAIFU), which also hails from 1967, has similar aims, taking a fairly typical yakuza movie framework and twisting it in all sorts of surreal configurations—and ending up with a finished product so bizarre it nearly defies categorization.
Sho, a private detective, finds himself in an arid desert, situated in a region “famous for its sex dolls,” along with a landline telephone (complete with an extension cord). There he’s approached by Naka, a realtor who wants Sho to track down Sae, a young woman who works for Naka but is currently being held captive by a gang of scumbags. Naka elects to take the job, but only after proving his sharpshooting skills by firing bullets into a tree. He succeeds in this, actually causing the tree to fall over.
The two head back to Naka’s apartment, where they watch a film of Sae getting raped and brutalized. Also afoot in the place is a mentally deficient man seen passionately making out with a blow up sex doll.
Sho’s quest to track down Sae involves roughing up several underworld figures and a barroom chat with his longtime enemy Ko, who murdered Sho’s wife. Sho, it seems, is also having an affair with Mina, Ko’s girlfriend, who tells Sho the whole affair is a set-up—but then some guys break in and, it seems, shoot her. Sho then shoots Ko, or appears to at least, and “reality” breaks down entirely in a riot of gratuitous gunplay, nudity and, of course, sex dolls.
In keeping with such a loopy narrative, the film is marked by elliptical storytelling that freely juxtaposes differing settings (such as the interior of a bar, from which the film immediately cuts to the middle of a desert) and time periods, and features characters who appear to get killed (sometimes on multiple occasions), only to turn up alive and well shortly thereafter. The asynchronous freeform jazz score only adds to the loopiness, as does dialogue like “I can see to the core of your heart” and the overall obsession with dolls (sexual and otherwise) and mannequins.
As a director Atsushi Yamatoya doesn’t evince the anarchic brilliance of Seijun Suzuki, this film’s most evident stylistic forefather. Unlike Suzuki’s BRANDED TO KILL, DUTCH WIFE IN THE DESERT loses momentum around the halfway point, despite the superbly composed visuals and evocative black and white cinematography, which deserve to have graced a better movie.
Vital Statistics
DUTCH WIFE IN THE DESERT (KOYA NO DACCHI WAIFU; INFLATABLE SEX DOLL OF THE WASTELANDS)
Yamatoya Productions
Director: Atsushi Yamatoya=
Producer: Teruo Yamoto
Screenplay: Atsushi Yamatoya
Cinematography: Hajime Kai
Editing: Shogo Sakurai
Cast: Yuichi Minato, Shohei Yamamoto, Miki Watari, Noriko Tatsumi, Mari Nagisa, Nogami Masayoshi, Akaji Naro, Taka Okubo, Hatsuo Yamatani