John Powers

When Kikuo's Yakuza father is murdered by a rival gang, Henai takes him in as a protege, teaching him to become an onagata, a male actor who plays female roles.

there is one snag.

Hinai already has a son of the same age, Shunsuke, who's slated to be his artistic heir, and in the kabuki world, artistic status passes from generation to generation.

Naturally, we expect Kikuo and Shunsuke to become rivals, and in a way they do.

Yet as they share the sometimes cruel ordeal of their training, they become friends and acting partners.

Each sees how the other is trapped.

Despite his fanatical dedication, Kikuo is considered a low-born outsider, complete with a Yakuza tattoo on his back, that the hidebound Kabuki culture doesn't want to accept.

In contrast, Shunsuke is expected to become a luminary like his dad, even though at some gut level, he doesn't even like Kabuki.

Born into a role he doesn't want, he'd rather party than practice.

We follow their entwined fates over the decades, a sometimes melodramatic dance of triumph and humiliation, complete with sexual rivalries and ignored children.

Played with riveting dry ice intensity by Yoshizawa Ryo, Kikuo becomes positively Faustian in his desire for greatness, while the less gifted but far more likable Shunsuke, that's the very enjoyable Yokohama Rusei, labors to escape his destiny.

With their friendship providing the dramatic pull, Kukuo tackles grand themes.

It paints a portrait of a late 20th century Japan still suffocating beneath musty ideas about birth and cultural inheritance.

And in Kikuo's struggle to become Japan's greatest kabuki actor, we feel the chilly isolation of devoting yourself to an art form so demanding that it leaves little room for ordinary human connection.

We also have the pleasure of learning about a ravishing art alien to most of us.

Normally, when we hear the phrase kabuki theater in America, often in the political realm, it's used derisively to suggest something ritualized, empty, pro forma.

But watching Kukuhou, you see how shallow this notion is.

The kabuki scenes we're shown are thrillingly performed by Yoshizawa and Yokohama, who each spent a year and a half training to do the film.

They make us feel the primal power in kabuki's blend of dance, music, and acting, as it tells tales of love suicides, or women who reveal themselves to be serpents.

Just as Olympic skaters must perform certain compulsory leaps and loops, and are judged on how well they do them, so kabuki actors have certain gestures they must perform in a role, and they are expected to do them perfectly.