Funeral Parade of Roses

The radical heart of Japan beats loudly in Funeral Parade of Roses, which nimbly combines late-60s queer / transgender / underground Tokyo culture, Greek tragedy, documentary, parody and schlock-horror, all twisted up in a time-shifting structure and fearless stylistic shifts. The loose, looping story concerns Eddie (played by gay icon ‘Peter’) and his rival bar hostess Leda, who’s jealous and out for revenge. It all works incredibly well, breaking boundaries left and right without pausing for thought, and opens up multiple windows onto the late-60s counterculture explosion.

‘A milestone in both the Japanese New Wave and world cinema as a whole, Funeral Parade of Roses is also a landmark film in the queer cinema canon. While significant films of the concurrent French New Wave, or those beginning to emerge from a burgeoning New Hollywood, often displayed either chronic incuriosity or outright apathy towards the lives and experiences of queer people (despite the lifting of many of the censorial rules that had previously quashed on-screen queerness), Matsumoto’s film is unapologetically queer. It may, from time to time, take on the look and feel of a Jean-Luc Godard film (it certainly owes much to the nouvelle vague) but Funeral Parade of Roses offers a vital alternative to the rigid heteronormativity that still pervaded much of the output then being made by even the most rebellious of filmmakers.’

Tamsin Cleary, BFI