In 1960s Tokyo, Gonda owns a bar in which the gay, cross-dresser, and trans scenes meet. Gonda is in a relationship with the madam of the bar, Leda. As the younger Eddie starts a passionate affair with Gonda, she ignites the jealousy of Leda, unaware of another kind of history between them.
Bara no soretsu, Nos funérailles en rose, O Funeral das Rosas, Rožu bēru parāde, Güllerin Cenaze Töreni, 장미의 행렬, 장미의 장례 행렬, Il funerale delle rose, Les Funérailles des roses, Η Πένθιμη Παρέλαση των Ρόδων, 蔷薇的葬礼, Pfahl in meinem Fleisch, Похоронна процесія троянд, Bara no Sôretsu, Похоронная процессия роз, Żałobna parada róż
Humanity and the world around us Intense violence and sexual transgression Surreal and thought-provoking visions of life and death Dreamlike, quirky, and surreal storytelling Challenging or sexual themes & twists Emotional and captivating fantasy storytelling Powerful poetic and passionate drama Show All…
FinlandK-16
Official Finnish premiere, 4K restoration
Japan
USA
France
Finland
France
Japan
USA
I cannot speak for every gender non-conforming person in the world; I can only speak for myself. Firstly, I use "gender non-conforming" simply because I don't know a better term for it. Secondly, every time I see a film like this, I am trapped between feeling like I've dodged a bullet, feeling like an imposter, feeling jealous, and feeling like there should be more in art and media than the dark side of trans-life.
[Edit 6-23-21: for those who don't know me, I have since resolved much of my identity questions and begun my medical and social transition as a trans woman.]
The film is a complex mess of imagery, a menage of docudrama, Warholian observation, theatrical hyperbole, and Greek…
With subliminal Warholian vignettes, fragments of cinematic hapax legomena (if such term could be applied to the film industry), assaulting psychosexual imagery, fragments of societal ridicule, jaw-dropping personifications, a fractured chronology, revolutionary techniques of film editing, a ghastly and hypnotic camera work and metafilm self-references, Bara no sôretsu is one of the most enthralling, unpredictable and thought-provoking avant-garde experiments that international celluloid has ever offered to mankind.
It starts with a statement:
"I am a wound and a sword, a victim and an executioner."
Then it proceeds with an alienating world beyond our comprehension. That is the first invitation you will ever receive to turn off your screen or leave the theater, because this nearly-metaphysical parade of memoir fragments and…
The interviewer's cluelessness and the sincerity and openness of the interviewees stands out. Their voices are given more credibility than the interviewer, than the director, than the filmmakers entirely. This is the heart of the film's sympathy. The Oedipal plotline was a shock to one of my friends/comrades who watched with me; this time around I saw its pieces fall neatly into place. It's hard to remember what it's like to watch a film without any understanding of what you're going into, even though I do it all the time. It's also funnier each time, watching the internal commentary, watching the weird jokes about Menas Jokas and party games. However, the imagery still stands out over the rest of the film; three gay boys at the urinals destroys every other queer film imagery ever.
Pride month: 17/30
Reclamation of self. Funeral Parade of Roses is a landmark in gay and trans cinema. Nothing is off limits and all boundaries of cinema and society can be transgressed. Sexuality and gender are fluid and undefined within Funeral Parade of Roses, which spreads such ideas of identity across a sprawling audiovisual canvas.
There is no consistent style to Funeral Parade of Roses, except cinematic chaos. At times the film is minimalist and intimate, yet other moments are bold and expressive. It is fast, and then it will be slow. The timeline doesn't exist, or isn't followed. Instead the film exits its own reality frequently, to interview the cast. It spoils itself and refuses to focus its narrative momentum in any…
Yeah sex is cool but you ever watched a film and it instantly becomes one of your favourites
My first two watches of this were centered quite firmly on how it is utterly immersed in what feels like the only genuine trans- representation from a film this old. However, even during those watches the other threads dangled quite visibly: militarization, globalization, counter-culture, ego, state violence, politics (when is anything *not* politics?), everything felt so obvious and yet, when it came to put words onto them they became strangely intangible.
My third watch cements it, makes the intangible tangible, reveals what is seemingly so incredibly obvious yet paradoxically difficult to pin down because everything about this film is so indivisible; you cannot talk about state violence without talking about counter-culture, counter-culture without talking about the ego, the ego without…
Ten years later, this remains the most powerful film experience of my life. It was part of my awakening; it was part of my journey through grief; it was part of my evolution as a writer. It's a perfect queer film, something that eschews standard narrative forms, something that engages deep queer themes of identity and reality, and something that reinvents its medium. Sharing it with friends is such a joy.
