Funeral Parade of Roses is a 1969 film from Japan directed by Toshio Matsumoto.
The central character is Eddie, a male who dresses up and lives as a female—in Japanese parlance, a "gay boy". Eddie, who is referred to throughout the movie as "she", works at a gay bar called the Genet. The Genet is a Local Hangout where gay Japanese businessmen can meet and hook up with pretty young gay boys like Eddie. Cute young Eddie is the rival to the older "madame" of the Genet, a cross-dresser named Leda. As it happens, both Eddie and Leda are in relationships with the owner of the Genet, a middle-aged Straight Gay man named Gondo. Eddie and Leda's professional and personal rivalry leads to a confrontation.
The above description, while accurate, does not do justice to the surreal immersion in madness that is Funeral Parade of Roses. The film is filled with bizarre, disturbing imagery. There are radical tonal shifts, from nightmarish terror to comic slapstick to horrifying violence, often at lightning speed. The timeline is completely scrambled. Sometimes the film shifts from fictional narrative to quasi-documentary, as the actors are interviewed out-of-character about their lives as cross-dressers and transsexuals, and even what they think about the movie they're actually in. There is a sub-plot concerning a long-haired director of weird avant-garde movies and the gang of kooks that hang out with him. And sprinkled throughout are flashbacks to years before, showing Eddie as a young man living alone with his mother—flashbacks that come to a terrifying conclusion.
It all turns out to be an adaptation of Oedipus the King!
The actor who plays Eddie went by the stage name of "Peter" (or "Pîtâ" in Japanese). 16 years after this production Peter appeared as an androgynous version of the Fool in Akira Kurosawa's Ran.
Tropes:
- Ambiguous Gender: Although it's ambiguous, Eddie would appear to be this. She dresses and acts like a woman 24/7 and is referred to as "she".
- Ambiguous Gender Identity: It's not clear just what the gay boys view themselves as. Eddie is referred to as "she" throughout the movie. Leda for her part says that she (?) enjoys dressing and living as a woman, but when she's asked about actually becoming a woman, she says she doesn't want to "go that far."
- Anachronic Order: The film sort of has a beginning, and it more or less comes to an end, but along the way the time frame is completely scrambled. Interspersed with the main narratives are flashbacks to Eddie as a young man with his mother, stuck in a deeply toxic mother-child relationship. Those flashbacks themselves are arranged in a jumbled order, as we see how Eddie's mother met her tragic end, then see other flashbacks from even earlier showing how she emotionally abused her son. The "present" story is scrambled as well. One of the first scenes has Leda on a street corner spotting Gondo and Eddie as they drive away together. A good 40 minutes later, after much of the 1969 part of the story has already been told, we jump back to that scene again.
- Attractive Bent-Gender: Eddie and Leda make very convincing women. An interviewer marvels that he really can't tell that Leda is a man.
- Bury Your Gays: Of the three main characters in the story, two wind up dead and the third gouges her eyes out.
- Cast Full of Gay: There's everybody at the club, there's also Guevara who makes love to Eddie. The only major character who is straight is Eddie's mother.
- Cat Fight: A ridiculous one between Eddie and Leda, complete with Clothing Damage and wigs being ripped off. Then an even sillier one between three of the girls from the Genet and three biological women who appear to belong to some sort of gang.
- Chekhov's Gun: The family photo. When Mom burns her husband's face out with a cigarette, it's meant to show how much she's still consumed by hatred of him and how little interest she has in Eddie. It turns out that the photo, and specifically the fact that the father's face was burnt out of the photo, are crucial to the resolution.
- Child Supplants Parent: Eddie kills her mother and unknowingly has sex with her father, Gondo.
- Driven to Suicide
- Leda kills herself in a very Large Ham way, putting on a wedding dress and covering her bed with flowers before presumably taking an overdose of pills.
- Upon realizing that he's been having sex with his own son, Gondo immediately slits his own throat.
- The End: One of the craziest parts of the movie comes at the end, after Eddie has stabbed his eyes out and is staggering down the staircase. Completely out of nowhere, a cheerful man in a suit pops up onscreen. Smiling, he notes how shocking and horrible Funeral Parade of Roses was. Then he says "Let's look forward to the next film! Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!"
- Erotic Eating: Accidentally, and lampshaded. One of Eddie's friends picks up a banana, starts eating it, and then starts giggling.Eddie: Stop it! I know what you're thinking!
- Eye Scream: It is Oedipus, after all. After seeing Gondo kill himself, Eddie picks up the knife and puts out his own eyes.
- Le Film Artistique:
- In-Universe, the ridiculous avant-garde film that Guevara the director shows his friends. It seems to consist of grainy, blurred footage of political protests paired with shots of a Medusa statue. After it ends one of Guevara's entourage says "I don't get it."
- Funeral Parade of Roses is this, in a big way.
- Foreshadowing
- A man tries to pick Eddie up in a scene shot against a wall of movie posters. What are the posters for? Oedipus.
- There's a huge damn hint later when Peter the actor, being interviewed out of character, says he doesn't agree with the incest stuff.
- When Eddie and Gondo come to see Leda's body, there are two dolls on the floor next to Leda's bed. One is lying on its back, and the other has nails in its eyes. These are the fates of, respectively, Gondo and Eddie at the end.
- Grievous Bottley Harm: The Cat Fight between Eddie and Leda ends with Leda whacking Eddie over the head with a bottle. He suffers no lasting ill effects.
- Hemo Erotic: Leda cuts his leg while shaving. Gondo makes a great show of sucking up the blood.
- High-Pressure Blood: Eddie stabs his mother in the gut. A huge fountain of blood shoots out and soaks his whole shirt.
- Jump Cut: The scene where the the older man hits on Eddie in front of a wall covered with movie posters is presented with a series of these. There's Eddie in front of the wall, then the man appearing out of nowhere via a Jump Cut, then the man suddenly appearing on Eddie's other side via another Jump Cut as he continues to make advances. This seems to underline how disturbed Eddie is by the encounter, as she flees in terror.
- Lens Flare: From the beam of Guevara's projector after his movie ends.
- Love Triangle: As bizarre and unconventional as this film is, it has as a key element of the story a very conventional love triangle between Gondo and his two transsexual lovers, Eddie and Leda.
- Match Cut:
- Eddie flees from the man trying to pick her up in the street, dashing into an art museum, where she faints. The scene then transitions via a seamless match cut to Eddie and Tony falling down drunk in the street, on their way back to Tony's apartment for sex.
- Later the Cat Fight between Eddie and Leda ends with Leda whacking Eddie on the head with a bottle. Eddie crumples to the ground, and the movie then match cuts back to the same prior scene of Eddie fainting in the art museum.
- Matricide: Eddie kills her mother after catching her having sex with a man.
- Medium Awareness: After the Proscenium Reveal the movie is fully aware that it's a movie. The actor playing Eddie is asked about his character.
- Orbital Shot: The camera circles around a blood-drenched, newly eyeless Eddie as she stands in the street while people gawk.
- A Party, Also Known as an Orgy: Guevara's party. He shows them his ridiculous movie, a marijuana joint is passed around, clothes come off, sex is had.
- P.O.V. Cam: Not every day you see a POV cam from the POV of a person who has just poked her eyes out.
- Primal Scene: A young Eddie catches his mother having sex with a man. He reacts very badly.
- Prolonged Prologue: The opening credits pop up a few at a time and very slowly as the opening scenes play out. By the time the title "Funeral Parde of Roses" appears on screen, a full 20 minutes have passed.
- Proscenium Reveal: Eddie goes home with Tony the GI, and they make love. There are shots of the two of them intertwined in bed, we hear Eddie moaning, there are shots of his face contorted in ecstasy. Then a voice from offscreen yells "Cut!" The shots pull back and we see the film crew, filming the actors playing Eddie and Tony in a scene.
- Removed from the Picture: We see several repeated shots, in extreme close-up, of a cigarette burning a man's face out of a photo. Eventually it's revealed that Eddie's mother is burning Eddie's father's face out of a family photo, the father having abandoned the family 15 years before when Eddie was a small child. This becomes extremely important.
- Repeat Cut: Three consecutive Repeat Cuts of Guevara's silly fake beard falling off. Why not?
- Scooby Stack: Some of the other girls in the Genet do this when watching Eddie and Leda's Cat Fight.
- Self-Deprecation: Guevara the film director, with his endless pontification on love, with his glued-on Che Guevara beard (which gave him his nickname), and his absurd Le Film Artistique that he shows his friends, seems to be Toshio Matsumoto making fun of himself.
- Setting Update: Oedipus the King moved up a few thousand years to 1969 Japan.
- Speech Bubbles: A deeply weird use of this trope. The confrontation between Leda and Eddie has the movie going into silent movie mode for a second, with Leda and Eddie hurling insults like "Bitch!" and "Whore!" at each other via speech bubbles spilling out of their mouths.
- Straight Gay: Gondo, who unlike all the gay boys at the bar, shows no effeminate mannerisms at all.
- Strip Poker: Sort of. At Guevara's party they play a game where the drunk and high guests try to walk across a strip of tape on the floor without falling over. If they do fall over, they forfeit a piece of clothing.
- Surprise Incest: Gondo gets a very unpleasant surprise when he gets a look at Eddie's photo and recognizes the man with the burnt-out face, Eddie's father...it's him.
- Talking Heads: There's a lot of this film that's weird. One of the weird things is the segments where the actors playing the gay boys step out of character, and the director asks them questions about life as a gay boy.
- Uke: What all the gay boys are, effeminate "bottom" partners to dominant men. Leda is the transgender version of a Housewife, putting food on the table and asking Gondo "how was your day?" when he comes home. Eddie is the transgender version of the sexy young mistress.
- Undercrank: Used to speed up both ridiculous Cat Fights, first between Eddie and Leda, and then between three of the girls from the Genet and three biological women in the street.
- Whatever Happened to the Mouse?: How is Eddie roaming around free after brutally murdering two people?
- Where Everybody Knows Your Flame: The Genet, a gay bar where businessmen in suits and ties come to pick up flamboyant gay boys like Eddie. One older man comments that "gay bars have changed."
