Empire of Passion

1978 ghost story

Rating: 13/20

Plot: The wife of a rickshaw driver begins an affair with a younger man. Together, they decide that the husband needs to be out of the way, so they get him drunk, strangle him, and throw him in a well. But then there's nobody to drive the rickshaw! Oh, snap! The townspeople start gossiping about the woman and her disappearing husband. To make matters worse, the woman begins seeing her husbands ghost all over the place, and this really throws off her concentration when she's trying to have sex.

I thought there was something stale about this one. The ghost was creepy, and the sex scenes were erotic , but there was just something missing that was apparently needed in order for me to feel the story. Something stifled. Maybe the problem was that it was just a little creepy and a little erotic? The movie seemed a lot longer than it was, and the actions of the characters didn't always make complete sense to me. I really think I would have liked this movie a lot more if everything wasn't so literal. There were some nice moments (the opening scene of a foreshadowing spinning wheel and shots from within the well) that make me think Nagisa Oshima, a director I'm not familiar with, is worth checking out, but the movie as a whole did not impress.