Funeral Parade of Roses (1969)

Funeral Parade of Roses (薔薇の葬列, Bara no Sōretsu) is a 1969 Japanese drama art film directed and written by Toshio Matsumoto, loosely adapted from Oedipus Rex and set in the underground gay culture of 1960s Tokyo. It stars Peter as the protagonist, a young transgender woman, and features Osamu Ogasawara, Yoshio Tsuchiya and Emiko Azuma. A product of the Japanese New Wave, the film combines elements of arthouse, documentary and experimental cinema, and is thought to have influenced Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film adaptation of Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange (although many of the points of comparison can also be found in earlier movies such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Love Is Colder Than Death).

In ’60s Japan, Gonda the owner of a gay bar runs a parallel drug business there. He is in a relationship with a transvestite Leda who manages the place for him. But with Leda losing her youth and her geisha-sensibilities ageing, Gonda shifts his attention to the young and pop-cultured Eddie, another transvestite working at the bar.

Funeral Parade of Roses follows a non-linear narrative with throwbacks to Eddie’s childhood without a father who left early and a mother who found his masculinity amusing. It all pieces together in the end while also capturing and satirizing the buzz of the underground drug, film and gay scene of ’60s-’70s Japan.

This was one of Stanley Kubrick's favourite films.