305 S. Campbell, Suite 101
Springfield, MO 65806
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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. (NR, 105 min.)
7:00 PM
Essential Arthouse 2026
Director Toshio Matsumoto’s shattering, kaleidoscopic masterpiece is one of the most subversive and intoxicating films of the late 1960s: a headlong dive into a dazzling, unseen Tokyo night-world of drag queen bars and fabulous divas, fueled by booze, drugs, fuzz guitars, performance art and black mascara. No less than Stanley Kubrick cited the film as a direct influence on his own dystopian classic A Clockwork Orange. An unknown club dancer at the time, transgender actor Peter (from Kurosawa’s Ran) gives an astonishing Edie Sedgwick/Warhol superstar-like performance as hot young thing Eddie, hostess at Bar Genet — where she’s ignited a violent love-triangle with reigning drag queen Leda (Osamu Ogasawara) for the attentions of club owner Gonda (played by Kurosawa regular Yoshio Tsuchiya, from Seven Samuri and Yojimbo). One of Japan’s leading experimental filmmakers, Matsumoto bends and distorts time here like Resnais in Last Year at Marienbad, freely mixing documentary interviews, Brechtian film-within-a-film asides, Oedipal premonitions of disaster, his own avant-garde shorts, and even on-screen cartoon balloons, into a dizzying whirl of image + sound. [Arbelos Films]
Starring: Pîtâ, Osamu Ogasawara, Yoshimi Jô
Director: Toshio Matsumoto
Genre: Drama
"Kaleidoscopic, electric, and fun as hell."
— Michael J. Casey, Boulder Weekly
"At once over-the-top camp and an invaluable artifact of a vanished gay age."
— David Noh, Film Journal International
"You will walk away from Matsumoto's film with a newfound appreciation of what movies can be."
— Simon Abrams, RogerEbert.com
"As a cinematic and cultural document this is fascinating material, definitely worth your time."
— Bradley Gibson, Film Threat
"A classic of both queer cinema and experimental film, and it's a real boon to cinephiles everywhere that it's being made widely available again."
— Dustin Krcatovich, Under the Radar
"At times it feels like we're watching the birth pains of a new strain of queer cinema, one both beautiful and tragic, unapologetic and glorious."
— Nathanael Hood, Audiences Everywhere
"A gender-fluid take on Oedipus Rex that takes cues from Jonas Mekas (who's name-checked in the film), Seijun Suzuki, and Andy Warhol, Funeral is a frenetic hodgepodge of styles and moods."
— Robert Ham, The Stranger
"Matsumoto's luscious black and white cinematography is ruptured by stylised desire, high melodrama, Jean-Luc Godard dictates, street cinema verite, experimental inserts, and some of the most evocative close-ups of eyelashes you'll ever see."
— Craig Mathieson, The Sunday Age
"While the normalization and societal acceptance of trans people are becoming more mainstream, the technique and way in which Matsumoto created this buzzy, gritty, and subversive world have still gone unmatched in modern cinema."
— Morgan Rojas, Cinemacy
