Chikamatsu monogatari

“You could be the Japanese painter from the Mizoguchi film…”, says Marie (Angela Winkler) in Engström’sLETZTE LIEBE to Thomas (Rüdiger Vogler), “…who painted his lover on the backs of all the women of this world. Or you could be the master who discovered this painter.” Engström: “This sentence relates to Mizoguchi’s Utamaro and His Five Women (1946). In DIE GEKREUZIGTEN LIEBENDEN, the love story is connected to a financial transaction in the strangest possible way, as one step on the path toward the freedom offered by a lover’s suicide, which has always fascinated me.”