You don’t necessarily have to be a fan of Japanese manga master Yoshiharu Tsuge to appreciate Lust in the Rain, a sprawling World War II-era fantasy adapted from an autobiographical collection first published in the early 1980s. But it certainly helps.

All over the map in terms of tone, content and genre, director Shinzo Katayama’s ambitious period piece strives to reproduce the surreal sexual ambiance of Tsuge’s wartime recollections, which shift from action to comedy to eroticism in a single swoop. Not for everyone’s taste, and perhaps best suited for local audiences, the film is more admirable for its swing-for-the-fences direction than for its exhausting plot twists.

Katayama cut his chops as an assistant director for Bong Joon-ho before making two features, including the well-received 2021 serial killer flick, Missing. But while he channels an energy and style similar to the Korean maestro, Katayama lacks Bong’s cutthroat precision and wicked sense of humor.

Clocking in at over two hours, Lust in the Rain overstays its welcome during an initial 80 minutes where nothing totally makes sense, before honing in on more substantial themes in a final hour that leaps between several alternative realities — to the point we never quite know what’s real or not.

At first, Katayama tosses us into a bizarre love triangle between an aspiring manga artist, Yoshio (Ryo Narita, Your Name); an older novelist, Imori (Go Morita); and a local femme fatale, Fukuko (Eriko Nakamura, August in Tokyo), who may or not have murdered her own husband. The time setting is unclear, as is the setting itself: The three live in a remote village called North Town, which is separated by border guards from another place called South Town.

The timid Yoshio, who serves as a rather unreliable narrator, is beset by sexual fantasies he transforms into panels for his comic books. These include a scene at the very start — and from which the film takes its title — where he slyly coerces a young woman into undressing during a torrential downpour, then proceeds to rape her in the mud. (A rape, it should be added, that transforms into passionate sex.)

In real life, Yoshio is infatuated with Fukuko, who moves into his cramped apartment along with the equally shady Imori. The two make loud love while Yoshio lies in the next room, creating even more sexual tension between the trio. It feels like one of the men may wind up killing the other. Or else like they may all agree to form a happy throuple. It’s hard to tell.

Things get weirder from there, although they slightly fall into place as well. Without spoiling too much (the better parts are in the second half) we realize that all we’ve been seeing actually involves Japan’s occupation of northern China during WWII, including massacres inflicted on the civilian population. Suddenly, Yoshio’s fantasies take on an altogether different sheen — they seem less the ravings of lustful artist than of a soldier traumatized by nonstop bloodshed.

It’s too much and perhaps too late. Katayama never quite sustains our interest while oscillating between coming-of-age desires, gory atrocities, and erotic surrealism. A prime example of this is a sequence that has Yoshio following the mystery girl from his dreams down several dark alleyways, until he witnesses her getting violently struck by a car. He finds her body lying lifeless in a rice paddy, then prepares to defile it with his finger.

Again, this is an acquired taste — one that’s probably best suited to lovers of Tsuge’s watakushi manga (a form of literary autobiography specific to Japan), where the author gives free reign to memory, imagination and his all-powerful libido. Katayama works overtime to translate Tsuge’s obsessions to the screen, employing a grandiose style for the war scenes and a sleek intimacy to all the sex, whether real or fantasized.  

The would-be romance at the heart of Lust in the Rain is carried by Narita and Nakamura, who are convincing as two lost souls that never quite connect. The problem is that so much of the film rests on shaky ground, we never believe in what we’re seeing. And if you don’t believe, then why should you care? In its closing sections, Katayama’s intimate epic plays out like a twisted take on The English Patient, where love and war collide in crazy ways. And yet the stakes never seem high enough.