Taboo

Taboo (Gohatto, 1999) is Nagisa Oshima's final film, and you can watch it online on iFILM. The year is 1865, the place a Kyoto barracks of the Shinsengumi, the shogunate's feared sword militia. A new recruit arrives: eighteen-year-old Sozaburo Kano, so delicately beautiful that the hardened warriors around him are pulled off balance from the moment he draws his blade.

Kano fights flawlessly and gives away nothing. Yet his presence stirs what these men never say aloud — jealousy, desire, dread. The veteran officer Hijikata, played by Takeshi Kitano, watches the rivalry over the newcomer corrode the unit's discipline and must decide whether to step in or let it run to blood. Ryuhei Matsuda, in his screen debut, plays Kano as an almost motionless riddle, while Tadanobu Asano brings a thread of dangerous obsession.

Adapted from Ryotaro Shiba's stories, this was the last work from the director of In the Realm of the Senses. The bushido code collides with forbidden longing, and it is never clear which is deadlier — the sword or the thing a man hides inside. Slow, gorgeous and unsettling, it rewards anyone who loves Japanese arthouse cinema and endings that refuse easy answers. Stream Taboo (1999) online on iFILM.