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Director: Akihiko Shiota
Screenplay: Akihiko Shiota
Cast: Yuki Mamiya as Shiori; Tasuku Nagaoka as Kosuke;
Takahiro Katô as Yuzawa; Michiko Suzuki as the Theatre actress; Ryushin Tei as
Kubouchi
Synopsis: Reclusive playwright Kosuke (Tasuku Nagaoka) finds
his imposed isolation from the modern world, in his self sufficient hut in the
woods, transgressed by a very sexually active woman named Shiori (Yuki Mamiya)
who refuses to leave him alone. Add to this her previous relationship with the
owner of a coffee resturent and an actress at his former theatre appearing with
four male acting protegees and a shy female secretary, and Kosuke is forced
towards Shiori and her almost primal sense of carnality.
So Nikkatsu have re-launched the Roman
Porno line for a celebratory event, commissioning five directors to make
five films under the line's original guidelines, that as long as there was
titilation every ten minutes and that they were under eighty minutes, these
films were very liberal in what their directors could do. These films were their
savour in the seventies until its end in the late eighties, started as a way to
survive the decline in Japanese cinema box office. However the Nikkatsu line like the rest of the pinku
(erotic) films from Japan have a high reputation to them nonetheless. For every
one that's probably offensive in the modern climate and every one that's
probably terrible or a cheap softcore porn film like their Western counterparts,
pinku cinema from Japan has a lustre of great artistry to them. Even the
European erotic films of the past can fail to have what they've always possess,
as whilst they could be more kitsch or fun genre schlock, the pinku can be
anything from fun comedy, serious drama and potentially inspiring in their
artistic concerns, all because of the rule that as long as there is sex and
nudity in them, even the lowest of budget works can have carte blanche in their
ideas. There can be anything from Akio Jissoji's spell binding Marquis De Sade's Prosperities of Vice (1988)
to Takahisa Zeze's dank but compelling drama Dirty Maria (1998). Even pure
silliness like The Strange Saga of
Hiroshi the Freeloading Sex Machine (2005) can be a delight in how a lack
of budget doesn't stop them from being playful and emotionally concerned for
their characters.
Now originally this was going to
be a more negative review of Wet Woman
in the Wind here, but the real issue at hand isn't that this film isn't fun
or rewarding. It's a film which has slowly burnt in quality over the days I've
watched it. The issue is that it's not the barnburner you'd expect from this
Roman Porno reboot project. However in light of Sion Sono's Antiporno (2016),
whilst not the best of this genre of films from Japan, I have to admit Wet Woman in the Wind is a lot more
rewarding as I've reflected on it. Not helping is that there's fives of these
films in this reboot project and there's no word of the other three in the
project being released in the United Kingdom - Hideo Nakata's White Lily, Isao Yukisada’s Aroused by Gymnopedies and Kazuya
Shiraishi’s Dawn of the Felines (all
2016). A project like this needs all five films to be freely available as a
packaged deal, which hasn't happened irritatingly in the UK. Even if the
project was ultimately a failure, this idea as with all ambitious one-off
concepts like it needs all the parts to be visible or one is not going to get
the full picture, a full picture that would've helped considerably add various
shades of new colour to the other films.
Premise wise this is pretty
simple. A modern man attempts to get back to his roots, living in the woods in
his own hand built hut and sustaining himself on basics, even drinking
distilled rainwater, only for true enlightenment not to come from his attempt
at a very modern and masculine concept, to cut oneself off from modernity in a
Walden-like isolation, but from sensuality and passion for life. That's
immediately where Wet Woman... is
deceptively simple because that is actually a pretty thoughtful concept to play
with, all the men in the film frustrated and with pretensions to themselves
whilst a figure of literal carnality like Shiori can yank them from these traps
through sex. It's a concept that could easily be dismissed as crass, as Shiori
is an archetype of the sexually active female figure who liberates others
through herself. Then there's the complexities like the restaurant owner having
left his wife for her, which has to be resolved, to that even the two other
female figures of the actress and the secretary have to go through their own
disregard for their previous issues to arrive at a better place emotionally.
That it's played through a fluffy sex comedy which is light in drama and broad
in its sex, between farcical camper van group sex to a threesome where two women
kick Kosuke out the hut, is the most disarming aspect because it suggests a
pinku film that's more about the softcore than any deeper thoughts.
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In the context of the Roman Porno
reboot series, it's pretty normal with the weight of expectations against it
unfairly. When you consider the ballyhoo behind this series of five films, you
expect a film like Underwater Love (2011),
one of the best modern pinku to be released in the West. Admittedly that was a
one-off musical pinku with cinematography by Christopher Doyle, but that's what you'd expect this project to be
full of. And yet, considering how very obvious and ultimately overrated Sion Sono's Antiporno, trying to have its cake and eat it by being important
but transgressive, literally having the female lead slam her face into a giant
cake as if to extract urine at itself, Wet
Woman in the Wind is actually more rewarding in hindsight. It's efficient
and ordinary erotica in tone, but that's actually to its benefit. It's
eroticism in particular is a virtue, never viewed in a sinful and destructive
light, any drama found in the worst in people (the older man who has left his
wife for the heroine, the playwright trying to isolate himself off from the
world only for that to be more a regressive act than actually liberating) that
is eventually healed through sex, the kind of rampant sex that's absurdly
prolific only in these sorts of films but manages to work within the world's
logic. A tone which openly embraces absurdity from the beginning when Shiori's
introductory scene has her making herself known to the protagonist by riding
her bicycle into a river.
It's playfulness with this
erotica is for laughs, never overtly absurd but with passion literally bringing
a house down in the end for good measure. The eroticism is helped by the
restrictions in Japanese censorship in fact. Ironically, whilst it's been the
cause of the more problematic content in Japanese pop culture in terms of
sexuality because creators have had to work around the restrictions of even showing
actual pornography without blurring, this law is actually to an advantage for
pinku like Wet Woman in the Wind to
have to be more creative, becoming more sensual and titillation in tone as a
result because you cannot show anything below the waist from the front because
of censorship. As much as I admire the Borowczyks,
Rollins, Francos etc. of Europe, European and American softcore from the
seventies to the modern day, with far less restrictions, can be some of the
most dated and embarrassingly tacky material you could ever sit through, their
greater allowance for luridness also meaning any Tom, Dick and Harry could
churn out material as long as it has full frontal nudity and sex without
thought to what's on camera. Even a sex comedy like Wet Woman..., rather than some of the more aesthetically ambitious
examples of the genre, has to rely on their style instead. That many of these
films were made by talented working directors and production crews, or were the
first films for great future talents in their industry is fittingly paid
tribute to by the individuals who were chosen for this reboot project.
That the film feels pretty
conventional is as much its failing as it is a virtue, a severe double edged
sword if there was any for this material. To kick-start a legacy again like
Roman Porno is one that's always going to evoke the issue of whether it's going
to live up to its origins, especially as this is meant to be five films only,
not as yet a continuation of the series. Within what feels like a bold artistic
project, it's nice to have a light hearted sex comedy in the midst, it's just
unfortunate that that also means Wet
Woman in the Wind is going to be unfairly compared to a work like Antiporno, which screams and flails its
limbs around, making the biggest noise proclaiming itself to be IMPORTANT
whether critically justifiable or not. Whilst played as a comedy, Wet Woman in the Wind does have a lot
of admirable moments within it that seem considerably smarter. How its view of
sexuality is carnal and beyond any crass surface, the leads biting each other
at one point in consensual role-play. That there's little plot details - the
lead's male friend who is an bad amateur poet, that there's a strange creature
in the woodlands that is only heard - which weave in and out like screwball
comedy beats and add to the playfulness. The farcical nature of the four young
actors (having to replay the same ghost story narrative over and over in one
scene) looking like Kosuke and how Shiori, part of defining her character's greater
sense of freedom as a person, starts mimicking dog noises to be sarcastic, all of which having a greater subtlety.
In imagining the film as a take
on repressed male sexuality, and having so many scenes I'm looking on for their
humour or just being sensual, this has been slowly burning in the back of my
mind as time has passed viewing the film. As a result this is such a better
viewing experience than I previously thought and in Wet Woman's favour, probably the kind of film you'd rather want
from a project to resurrect old style Japanese pinku as it feels closer to the
ethos of erotica. That which was originally made by Nikkatsu wanting to make erotic films which could yet still be
viewed by couples, men and women a target audience equally, which were playful and
with whit.
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