Carmen Comes Home (カルメン故郷に帰る Karumen kokyō ni kaeru)
Japan, 1951
Lily Carmen works as a stripper in Tokyo. When she and her friend Akemi visit Carmen's hometown for few days, the duo causes a scandal among the locals.
Carmen and Akemi's costumes are loud and fun, but also kind of distasteful in some occasions. They are young, modern and fashionable, although more vulgar than sophisticated. Carmen's questionable predilection for an ugly orangish red, as seen in the dress she wears at her arrival and in the outfit she takes off during her slinky dance, can only compete with the flashy yellow and black dress that Akemi wears at the beginning and, once again, at the end of the movie (even though the striped pattern honours her wasp-waist dancer figure).
The girls' clothing contrast with that worn by the local women. These last ones wear traditional kimono or working outfits composed of long sleeved shirts and pants, which cover their natural curves and put functionality above vanity. The choice of colors like brown or dark blue/green also make their clothes, and their bodies, to be dissolved in the countryside landscape. When Carmen and Akemi arrive in town, women feel curious and skeptical while men are completely allured by their eye-catching looks. However, although their bare shoulders, cheeky bellies, and exposed legs attract the looks of everyone in town, their provocative style, and especially behavior, cause distress to Carmen's father, embarrassed and ashamed because of her lifestyle choices.
There are several remarkable costume moments during the film. Life is a stage for both girls. They not only wear matching costumes in their final striptease show, also when walking around town or through the mountains and improvising singing and dancing acts. The dotted dresses they wear during their first walk around town are particularly charming. Akemi is especially playful with the dress showing her legs when posing for a picture or flirting with the school professor. Even though these outfits are bit more stylish than the ones previously worn, the young men they find along the way believe both girls are prostitutes. Later in the mountains, both girls happily dance in their underwear. They both wear cute bra and short sets, white with red flowers for Carmen, pink with a red heart for Akemi. Local men attend to this unexpected show as amused than amazed.
Akemi causes a big trouble during the school Sports Day celebration because of her outfit. Her tricky costume skirt falls to the ground, exposing her underwear and causing the laughs of the public. Carmen gets angry when the incident interrupts abruptly the moving piano performance by the blind professor, her former love interest.
For the dance show, the girls choose matching strapless tops and sarong skirts with head veils and flowers. The color choice (pink, yellow, red, black and dark green) is again tasteless and cheap. This combined with the Arabic-style music played with the wrong instruments, the clumsy Bellydance and the silly and perplexed faces among the public, create a grotesque and ridiculous scene.
Carmen firmly believes that she is an artist whose art needs to be shown everywhere, and she has good intentions helping economically to his family with her job, but one cannot help but thinking that her return home was a really bad idea.
Carmen Comes Home was the first color film ever produced. Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita, Shotaro Amano was the costume designer and the dresses were donated by the Takashimaya Department Store.
In the film stills, Hideko Takamine as Lily Carmen and Toshiko Kobayashi as Maya Akemi.
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