This was one weird World War 2 movie.
During the Sino-Japanese War, a young army nurse gives sympathy to her patients and falls in love with an impotent doctor who’s addicted to morphine.
-IMDB
The film starts innocently enough with viewers being introduced to Sakura Nishi, second nurse in a recovery ward. Then… she gets gang raped. In the first 30 minutes of the movie. Then she gets sent to the front line as punishment, and then we get brutal dismemberment of fallen soldiers where she becomes smitten by Okabe the head doctor. Then she floats between crippled soldiers sexually satisfying them as pittance for her involvement in the triage clinic. Finally in the climax of the film, comfort women are referenced and shown before half the camp gets cholera — before Nishi and Okabe finally mate before the battalion gets annihilated.
From my perspective… the character of Sakura Nishi (the protagonist) serves as slight inspiration for Motoko Kusanagi (Ghost in the Shell) as a reluctant soldier that sees all of her comrades and lovers die becoming detached from reality (hence my linking Angel to Ghost). In addition, the entire concept of the film is more than likely the source of the Night Shift Nurse(s) trope/fetish common to Japanese and American pop culture.
In general, this is a real idealistic World War 2 movie from a female perspective. If this was made in Hollywood, it would be cancelled immediately due to how the women were treated throughout the film.
First screened October 23, 2023 on Mubi.