Directors who make the jump from indie films to commercial movies are common in Hollywood but less so in Japan. Still, Takahisa Zeze is among the most successful of such jumpers out there.
The director got his start in pinku eiga (pink films), churning out softcore adult fare in the 1990s to considerable critical acclaim. But the Zeze who made those films, with their experimental stylistics and touches of offbeat humor, is hard to find in his latest, the perfervid boxing melodrama, “One Last Bloom.”
Based on a novel by Kotaro Sawaki, the film is aimed squarely at a domestic audience that likes broad narrative strokes with heroes and villains as easy to read as ad copy found on train platforms.