Kazuhiko Yamaguchi

“Delinquent Girl Boss: Blossoming Night Dreams” (Zubekô Banchô: Yume Wa Yoru Hiraku) is the first of four films in the Toei, Pinky Violence “Delinquent Girl Boss” series, each of which was directed by Kazuhiko Yamaguchi. The film opens with young tearaway Rika (Reiko Oshida) locked-up and creating mayhem in a reform school. On release she finds work at a Shinjuku night club run by Madam Umeko (Junko Miyazono), which seems to specialise in employing ex-con delinquent girls from Rika’s old reform school. Rika does her best to go straight but when the local Yakuza boss moves in to steal the club, she finds herself resorting to sex and violence to help out Madam Umeko. The plot of “Blossoming Night Dreams” is fairly standard fare and is the type of basic structure that forms the basis of many Pinku films of this type. Director Yamaguchi gives the material a lighter comedic tone than normal but still manages to hammer home a number of points about outsiders and the need for acceptance. He also maintains the “feminist” countercultural edge that was prevalent in Japanese exploitation films of the period – Rika and the women at the night club are portrayed as positive, proactive and powerful, easily capable of standing up to and taking violent revenge on any man that wrongs them. That said, this is a Pinku film and Yamaguchi does not shy away from the exploitation and sexploitation elements, so plenty of fights, beatings, nudity and drug mayhem. The violent set-pieces are all well-staged with Yamaguch even giving catfights amongst the girls a heightened semi-mythic quality. The film looks and sounds great with lush colourful, widescreen photography from Hanjiro Nakazawa and a funky, psych-inflected score by Toshiaki Tsushima. The cast is good, particularly Reiko Oshida in the leading role. She is beautiful, tough, violent but with a vulnerable edge and a charming, cool, laid back delivery. Overall “Blossoming Night Dreams” isn’t the best of the Pinky Violence films, but it is still great fun – it is technically clever, nicely stylised, violent and sexy, with plenty of sly humour and a great central performance by Reiko Oshida.… (más)