Beginning with 2001's "Ichiban Utsukushi Natsu (Firefly Dreams)," a Yasujiro Ozu-esque drama about a friendship that develops between a rebellious teenage girl and an elderly former actress in the countryside, John Williams has been directing films in Japan with Japanese talent that do not proclaim their gaijin-ness. At the same time, he is not trying to make fake "Japanese movies" for foreign or local consumption.
Instead, with admirable integrity and what some might call Welsh stubbornness, he has been putting his own visions on film, which in the neo-noir "Starfish Hotel" (2006) and the new "Sado Tenpesuto (Sado Tempest)" tend toward the dark and turbulent.
He has also become more experimental and adventurous. If "Firefly Dreams" was a quietly humanistic, beautifully shot film in the Golden Age mold, "Sado Tempest" is a melange of punk music, dystopian fantasy, Noh and the Bard. Instead of Ozu, Williams seems to be channeling Teruo Ishii, whose 1969 cult shocker "Kyofu Kikei Ningen: Edogawa Rampo Zenshu (Horrors of Malformed Men)" mixed "The Island of Doctor Moreau" with butoh dance. The titular storm refers to William Shakespeare's "The Tempest," on which it is loosely based.