Film Review: Luminous Woman

“Professional wrestling legend Keiji Mutô as you’ve never seen him before!”

Okay, this is not an actual tagline for director Shinji Somai’s decidedly odd and incredibly captivating 1987 Japanese film Luminous Woman (Hikaru Onna), but you’ll definitely see Mutô, AKA The Great Muta, in unusual form.

Mutô stars as Sensaku Matsunami, a mountain man from Hokkaido who roams barefoot to Tokyo to find his fiancée Kuriko (Narumi Yasuda), who moved to the big city to study finance with the goal of returning home to better her rural village. Club owner Shiniuchi (Saburô Date) offers to help Sensaku find Kuriko — who he says now works in a hostess bar — and pay him well if he wrestles opponents in the club to amuse its wealthy clientele. 

And what an establishment this is. As grapplers face off in a dirt ring, Cirque du Soleil style entertainers dance and prance around them to the sound of opera music. There, Sensaku meets former opera singer Yoshino Koyama (Michiru Akiyoshi), who says she has lost her performance voice. 

Sensaku traverses the seedy underbelly of Tokyo, fighting club opponents and the occasional civilian, as he attempts to bring Kuriko home, all the while growing closer, in his way, to Yoshino. There is much more to the plot — most of it ranging from strange to off-the-wall to bizarre, but also boasting plenty of pathos — but we’ll leave the plot here to avoid spoilers, and for the sake of brevity. 

Mutô makes an impressive acting debut, bearded and traversing Tokyo shirtless and occasionally naked, playing a rural man used to a simple lifestyle and suddenly thrust into a world he couldn’t have possibly imagined before leaving his hometown. He puts his physical skills learned during his (at this point) 2–3 years as an international pro wrestler to good use, but also impressively holds his own in the dramatic arts department against his admirable fellow cast members.    

Somai, who had previously directed such now-cult-classics as Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (1981) and Typhoon Club (1985), helms with seemingly unchecked verve here; saying he directed with panache and aplomb would be putting it mildly. The visuals range from the gritty to the breathtaking — Mutsuo Naganuma’s cinematography is terrific, and this brand new 2K restoration from the original negatives looks superb — and the pacing is spot-on, as even in the rare quieter moments of character reflection, the proceedings demand attention.

Third Window Films releases a Region B Blu-ray of Luminous Woman on May 20th, 2024, featuring a brand new 2K restoration from the original negatives, part of its Directors Company Collection. For more information, visit https://shop.terracottadistribution.com/collections/directors-company/products/luminous-woman-directors-company-edition-bluray.

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