A Snake of June

Rinko Tatsumi works as a telephone counsellor at a mental health helpline, where she talks callers through their darkest moments. Her husband Shigehiko is a wealthy businessman, and although the two have long stopped sharing a bed, their household runs on quiet routine. That routine breaks when Rinko receives an envelope containing intimate photographs of herself, taken without her knowledge. The sender turns out to be a man she once talked out of suicide, and he uses the pictures to draw her into a game he directs by phone, with the negatives as the prize. As the stranger tightens his hold, he also works his way into Shigehiko's life, pulling the couple toward encounters that unsettle the order they had settled into.

Shinya Tsukamoto wrote, produced and directed the film, and also appears among the cast as the man behind the photographs. Asuka Kurosawa plays Rinko, with Susumu Terajima, Takuji Suzuki, Mansaku Fuwa and Masato Tsujioka in supporting roles. Tsukamoto had made his name with Tetsuo: The Iron Man in 1989, and this 2003 feature sits between that debut and Kotoko, one of several later films he directed.

The film runs 77 minutes and was released in June 2003. It is largely a two-hander built on the tension between Rinko and her pursuer. On IMDb it holds a 6.2 rating from ten critics' reviews, while on TMDB audience voters give it 6.8 from 176 votes, a small but favourable sample that suggests the film found a more appreciative view among viewers than among reviewers.