Unagi (Shohei Imamura, 1997)

The Eel finds a man trying to keep a low profile after his release from prison, eight years on from killing his adulterous wife in a fit of passion. Eventually, he is forced to face up to what he did and reluctantly start reintegrating into society, as a woman he saves from an overdose attaches herself to him.
There are essentially two films at odds here: the primary a psychologically truthful study of guilt and self-repression, interspersed with telling imagery, the secondary a quirky semi-comic piece populated by gratuitously oddball side characters like a guy who keeps turning up obsessing about contacting aliens, or the woman's flamenco-dancing doolally mother. The former wins out, but the niggling presence of the latter does a lot of unwelcome work in undermining the impact of the message.

6/10