Confessions Among Actresses (1971) - Yoshishige Yoshida

The narrative of Yoshishige Yoshida's Confessions Among Actresses follows three leading ladies, all appearing in the same movie, each of which is going through some form of a personal crisis or mental breakdown.  From there the film becomes much less narrative driven, using staggered flashbacks, melodramatic acting, and confessional type confrontation sequences to create of profound and deeply layered portrait of three woman's psyche's.  Yoshia routinely blurs the lines between reality and fiction with this tale of three actresses, questioning the true nature of reality for those that routinely create it.  This is not an easy film to experience, with Yoshia routinely throwing the viewer into the headspace of these woman, faking out the audience in a way that has them question what is real and what is merely performance.  Yoshida's jaw-dropping visuals are fully on display, using a heavy dose of low angels, obscured compositions, and open spaces that enhance the voyeuristic aspect of the experience.  Yoshia has created a film that showcases three woman struggllng with their own identity, using heavy doses of symbolism to showcase the actresses' struggles with identity.  These woman are tools for creating a form of reality, and because of it they have lost a sense of who they are, struggling to find a blance between their profession and their own intimacy.  A diffifcult film for casual viewers, Yoshida's Confessions Among Actresses is a perplexing film that attempts to tap in,o the female psyche, exploring three woman who struggle to find their true identities in a world that asks them to be someone else.  

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