Movie: Funeral Parade of Roses

If you saw David Lynch’s Mullholland Falls and thought, “too conventional,” then Funeral Parade of Roses is a film for you. Describing it as a transsexual love triange set in 60’s Japan makes it appear more conventional than it is. It pulls just about every cinematic trick in the book and runs them through a narrative blender. The nonlinear narrative removes any orientation the viewer might hope for at the beginning of each scene. Some scenes seem to fit the narrative, only to be revealed as movie sets by a crew of young film radicals making a movie about transsexuals. An argument between two characters is shown in on-screen speech bubbles. Fights are sped up, Benny-Hill style, complete with organ circus music. It ends with a revalation of incest and gory visuals of a transsexual blinding herself with a knife.