Marquis de Sade's Prosperities of Vice (1988)

 

Director: Akio Jissoji

Screenplay: Rio Kishida

Based on the work of the Marquis de Sade

Cast: Renji Ishibashi, Seiran Li, Kôji Shimizu, Yasumi Hara, Kimiaki Makino, Kumiko Tachibana, Minori Terada and Miwako Yonezawa

Canon Fodder

 

Prosperities of Vice takes us to the Taisho era of Japan in the 1920s. A group of upper class men and one women, Sadean figures of power, are being served at a long dining table by topless, submissive female maids, and they recount their tales of sin and debauchery, be it turning a public officer's wife into a pet, or executing an innocent man as a judge and being aroused by it sexually. One of them, a nobleman calling himself a Marquis (Kôji Shimizu), runs a theatre and sets about adapting the novel Justine by his namesake the Marquis de Sade using real criminals, murderers and sex workers as the cast. It is all with the intention to show the deepest desire of people secretly to commit crime, to "teach the pleasure of vice" to audiences.

His wife, the beautiful Seiran Li, a former sex worker herself bought by him and playing the titular character, is shown mirroring Justine herself, having become a sex worker out of losing her family and being left an orphan, a real life example of the character without needing to live in a world of period appropriate French dress costumes. The Marquis however made an ill-advised decision in doing this, as he decided to cast a thief in the lead male role (Renji Ishibashi), even going as far as have him seduce and take his wife for his voyeuristic pleasures behind a peephole. The thief and wife fall in love, undercutting the ideology of vice with their true love beyond Sadean ideas. Also significant is the historical date as, with the thirties approaching, here as in real life Japan, there would be a military uprising would lead to the end of the Taisho era, and the push to a far right wing military leadership.  They would invade other countries and, leading the Pacific and Second World War's aftermaths, and would cleave through dissidents considered "anti-Japanese" to the new leaders the moment they got power.

An eighties Japanese film with a very glossy look that is unique to Japanese cinema, it is a late era Roman Porno and still as much an erotic film if undercut by its melancholic air. This is in mind to its director Akio Jissoji, whose style completely takes the period erotic drama here into a fascinating direction. He was a fascinating director in general still needing more attention given to him. With his debut This Transient Life (1970), and his other films for the Art Theatre Guild, he created very striking existential dramas, the debut itself with each image and scene playing out with continual movement of the camera or with something important and distinct in each shot. Yet he was also directing tokusatsu films and television series like for the popular Ultraman franchise. He would juggle genres and themes over the years, even adapting Edogawa Ranpo tales by the nineties, and here he presents many distinct, eye catching images and sequences, all centred around this illusion which is broken by a real murder in the theatre midway through.

The film is very subdued and is drawn back in its plotting, its sensuality and even the sense of depravity marked against its mood, which slowly re-tales Justine against the inevitable tragic end to the tale. Even in mind that the Sadean lot are not good people, the irony of their depravity to the militarisation that comes, and how its defeat radically scarred Japan literally and culturally, is not lost. There is a lot to take in that would need multiple viewings, which makes the rarity of the film more disappointing, its elusive tone pulling the plot further from being fully conveyed conventionally on purpose.

The film is more fantastical than This Transient Life, of clocks and a small cramp hideaway full of life sized mannequins. The concept of de Sade's virtues of vice are forced to be re-evaluated when a real death takes place, the real world encroaches on your desires, and someone you control goes against your wishes by falling in love. The film splits itself in the real and the abstract. The machinations of real life, seeing actors getting into costumes and rehearsing, are contrasted against the actual theatre stage. The film cuts from one time period to another, the play reflecting what is happening off the stage, and when the otherworld is brought up by the end, the theatre becomes an internal construct of the characters' minds as well.

In terms of sexuality and debauchery, it is as subdued. Baring a scene of said maids being forced to eat sea cucumbers, which turns out to be the most grotesque scene even next to all the perversions depicted, it is as subtle as its tone. It is not Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) either. It is still a very erotic film, but it conveys it through image and mood rather than actual sex even when that is shown. For a film which even has an explicit scene of necrophilia, it is depicted with a matter-of-fact eeriness which is less shock value, but portrayed through a baroque tone as a heighted dramatic denouement for some characters.  Unlike other depictions of Sade as well, it is about the ideas being conveyed through words and thought rather than the whips and chains of, say, Jess Franco's adaptations. Like This Transient Life, it matches this with a visual texture to make everything, the actors' naked bodies to the environments around them, sensual. Even when he adapted more fantastical genre work, like Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (1988) with its time hopping tale, including the Taisho era, of the war between Tokyo and a magician wishing to reduce it to rubble, the director was just as fascinated with the visual textures and mood of his work. Its depictions of the occult and the monstrous felt from the same director of This Transient Life, making his career directing the likes of Ultraman even more compelling to contrast to these films.

The result is very unconventional. The concepts of de Sade are placed against reality itself, of political strife and emotional strife, the Marquis and his friends as isolated in their perversions as the four leaders in Salo... while the world changes completely for them outside the buildings they are housed in. The virtues and vices cannot be easily separated as his wife proclaims at one point she is neither Justine nor the good Juliette, of the other Marquis de Sade tale that was written as a mirror, instead her own person with her own thoughts, ideas, and her own forms of virtue and perversion. The plan of the Marquis to bring the joys of vice to people through the play does not bear in mind that the people he is around already act out their own delights, and like most people, he becomes hostile to it. Despite the heavy subtext this and This Transient Life have, they are all about where people place themselves when they are separated from perceived texts and concepts, and have to think about their own existence. Mandala (1971), which could be a deeply troubling film nowadays to some to watch as it followed a religious cult who practiced rape to bring in subservient members, was a pretext for themes this film had with hindsight for me. Like the Japanese cinema and culture I have been able to view so far, it is very much an existentialism that goes as far as the soul, and does not shy away from the perverted and vulgar in answering the questions, or mixing it into "vulgar" genres like pinku films. Nikkatsu, who produced the film, abandoned the roman porno movies that kept them afloat by the time this was made. Those films are still there for me to view, but it is befitting I became aware of the one which breaks the ideas of sexuality and perverse delights down and scrutinises them.

One day, I hope this particular film gets rediscovered and brought in full restoration due to these reasons talked of in the review, a film which does scenes that are deliberately erotic even if playing with taboos, in green dream haze flashbacks having politicians' wives crawl naked with their sleek figures and black bob haircuts on chains like a pet, but contrasting it with the deconstructions of these philosophies. It contrasts them with the absurd naivety of the Marquis' last meal, starting with a mere olive stuffed into an animal carcass than insert that into more animal carcasses so that the olive itself, with the rest disposed of, takes all the succulent flavours of the earth to the sky in one single bite. Decadence is shown but with a moral knife point, where the philosophy meant to free people of organised religion, government and guilt in the West is shown here as being as complacent and as capable of being a tool for the elite to hold power against the public, eventually to be swallowed by another elite iron fist which was not complacent in real life. 

What becomes true liberation is how, in the romance in the centre of the plot even to be lost, eroticism is found even within the actresses' makeup, sensual even without the sex or nudity. The eroticism that is pure and sensual is in how much coloured gel and decor there is as well as the intimacy show, fully liberated as much as in how characters talk to each other intimately bonding as much as the sex. Dolls populate the environment and they move, opening their eyes or turning their heads. A pubescent girl doll spills from her stomach vibrant, sexually red strawberries. The artificiality of the Western European clothes in this Japanese film give as much a sense of the unnatural especially as, until we see the chaos in the real world once or twice, it is entirely closed within its own existence. It is a film which ends with unexpected half-clown makeup and dress, and feels appropriate to the tone of the work, a sense of art and pulp that sent a shiver down my spine.

The Bedroom (1992)

 

a.k.a. Unfaithful Wife: Shameful Torture

Director: Hisayasu Satô

Screenplay: Shirô Yumeno

Cast: Kiyomi Itô as Kyoko; Momori Asano as Ai; Kyôko Nakamura as Kinue

An Abstract Candidate

 

Lasting only an hour, this film within the pinku erotic genre is clearly less interested in erotica in a titillating way, but as a theme, about obsession. A woman is our central figure, Kyoko (Kiyomi Itô), whose sister has died under tragic circumstances. Leaving a mystery she wishes to solve about the death, Kyoko before the film starts has already joined a club where, as a willing participant, women are hired to take sleeping pills and let themselves be sleeping beauties for male clients sexually in sessions.

As erotica, from the get-go, this is tonally more ethereal, a mood piece about sexual desire, where for certain scenes the harsh reds, pinks and blues feel apt for the tone as do the scenes of septic white living spaces. There is going to be content here that will make people uncomfortable in content, about playing to faked non-consensual scenarios, but it is something distinct as a tale of a woman who, investigating this mystery, is also trying to figure out her own self. Kyoko also loves a husband who may even be a fake one, desires him, only to feel no love back, and the loss of her sister intermingling within this context adds to the psychological schisms which grow to plague her as the film progresses in narrative. From here, it goes into this weird club of men with curious fetishes and willing dolls, even with Kyoko not taking the sleeping pills and becoming a fully willing participant, even if one female member died of an overdose on the job of these pills, a factor which adds a suspicion of those involved.

These do include kinks which are less extreme but follows a theme of ennui felt in society, where the husband is taking the same type of sleeping pills himself due to stress of his ICT job. It is a malaise leaving men with obsessions of photographing these women to one man who likes oiling people up, which in context is sensual, belying how this is tackling taboos with a neutral stance. These is however the most notorious scene here too, the one which may raise concern, of a client fixated with biting playing by Issei Sagawa. Sagawa is a choice of a scene's casting which is shocking, as he was a notorious figure convicted in France in 198 for an incredibly disturbing case, the murder of Renée Hartevelt in Paris which also involved cannibalism among its many disturbing aspects. He was deemed mentally unfit for trial, but would be eventually able to return back to his own country in the later part of the eighties, which was incredibly controversial, with a growing morbid celebrity he was developing back home and in France itself. It is the one moment which could be seen as morally problematic in casting him, though considering he even became a food critic for the Japanese magazine Spa, you can entirely blame certain pop culture being ghouls too. It is balanced as well as the fact that as a figure whose notoriety ebbed away, the seeming ability Sagawa had to continue as a free man became a curse for him due to how he developed this celebrity fed reputation, until dying in on the 24th November 2022.  Director Hisayasu Satô, whose career in pinku ranged between transgression (Lolita Vibrator Torture (1987)) to explicit homoerotic themes and subject matter (Bondage Ecstasy (1989)) is someone who clearly used pinku cinema to tackle taboos and thinking of his films beyond titillation, so the casting whilst eyebrow raising is clearly in mind to someone who was being provocative in this casting choice even if one with hindsight which may have been a step too far.

The Bedroom is fascinating even beyond this as an esoteric mood piece, apt from its aforementioned director Hisayasu Satô. Alongside Kazuhiro Sano, Toshiki Satō and Takahisa Zeze, he is one of "Four Heavenly Kings of Pink", he was among the group acclaimed in pinku cinema but as explicitly experimental figures. The eroticism is explicit but centred on images like Kiyomi Itô on a bed wrapped in cling-film, it is a disarming tale of disconnected figures attempting to connect through their bodies and sex. It is almost like J.G. Ballard in its septic metropolitan world and obsessions such as the voyeurism of film cameras, Kyoko keeping one on in the fridge to talk directly to, or how the owner of the sleeping doll club is an unseen figure hidden behind an industrial white face mask, who can see all through cameras. The only thing which seems abrupt is the very unexpected twist ending, which is one that may be divisive for those who appreciate the film already for how abrupt it is, even if built upon in the sense of disconnect in the reality of the film. Nonetheless, it is a compelling example to how erotic cinema in Japan became a way to produce some very unconventional productions over the decades, in any tone and genre, winning favour for me the more I see.

Abstract Spectrum: Atmospheric

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

Twilight Dinner (1998)

 

Director: Yutaka Ikejima

Screenplay: Kyôko Godai

Cast: Yumi Yoshiyuki as Tsukiko Kurotani; Kanae Mizuhara as Mayako Kurotani; Kyôsuke Sasaki as Kazuhiko; Reina Azuma as Kumi; Kazuhiro Sano as Hasegawa; Ken'ichi Kanbe as Saitô

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

In the first shot, Twilight Dinner from the prolific pinku director Yutaka Ikejima combines violence and erotica with a nude woman, dead, on a white tiled bathroom floor with blood everywhere. The first dialogue of the film, in an interrogation room time after between police and the lead Kazuhiko (Kyôsuke Sasaki) is crass, "What made you literally eat her pussy?", which suggests something more unintentionally gross or/and ridiculous, and is definitely a line which was chosen for shock value. Instead, Twilight Dinner is surprisingly, for its more lurid and openly transgressive parts, more eerie and peculiar, an example of pink erotica cinema's creative side as long as the films could still be sold on their eroticism. Traumatised, and guilty for the murder of that woman, Kazuhiko recounts crossing paths with two sisters moving into an apartment, his fate sealed all because of a wine opener left on the street he kindly returned to them.  

The sisters have a lot of "red wine", and if there is a potential flaw with Twilight Dinner, it is blatantly obvious from the get-go, whilst a fascinating take in the end, this is a vampire film which takes nearly the whole of the hour plus length for Kazuhiko to figure this surprise out. It takes three quarters of the film for the term "vampires" to be said, and the plot itself in terms of these revelations is the weakest piece of the production. We know ahead of time too this turned south as an event in his life when Kazuhiko bookmarks the film recounting this tale to police detectives, questioning him for the murder of a woman we saw at the beginning, and trying to rationalise this until his argument vampires were involved becomes incredulous to them.

Yutaka Ikejima wanted to make a vampire in mind to their available resources, and dropped in late nineties urban Japan, with the stark apartments and tightly walled bars, the film does capture a fascinating atmosphere. Between the chimes and bells in the soundtrack, to the mannequins within the apartment of youngest sister Mayako (Kanae Mizuhara) and the eldest Tsukiko (Yumi Yoshiyuki), he makes a film in spite of its simplistic plot structure which is distinct. You will know it involves vampires from the wine bottle collection, but Kazuhiko trying the wine and getting into the mystery is clearly the point above the plot. The film is fetishishtic already before its erotic content in how it treats the horror content, clearly not being led by the plot but what the production can do in terms of mood and images even for a low budget film, befitting a pinku film where images of an erotic kind are their selling point. Thick red blood split on broken white tea cup porcelain, on a stark interrogation room and on a wooden table, is just as distinct as the sex scenes themselves, as explicit as you can get away in softcore in real bodies of actors in exaggerated acts, the actresses in particular emoting here loud enough in them they could be heard in the next room, all clichés but in itself as exaggerated and contrasted by horror content which is as heightened.

As the film escalates, from Kazuhiko being with the youngest sister Mayako, physically weaker and protected by the eldest Tsukiko, to Tsukiko herself becoming interested in him, the little this can do as a low budget film is, admitting personal tastes, moody and interesting beyond the erotic content. My fascination with low budget and obscure genre work but especially Japanese horror films, their own distinct locations and styles, even if working with even the cameras at access, is at hand here, but this is especially the case with a pinku film like this where the plot is clearly less important than the fixation on sex and the morbid, codified when in a sex scene Tsukiko bites Kazuhiko's lip mid-coitus, blood spilt from the wound, intermingling into the kiss after.

It is a film that was sold as pinku, and it has to be considered in mind, alongside the male gaze involved, this is a film clearly wanting to show this too. But the starkness is felt on purpose too, even if there is a lot of explicit faked sex in what short a length the film is, cold and grungy with a sense of deliberation. Yutaka Ikejima, alongside being insanely prolific as an actor, is also a director with over a hundred credits, and whilst he started in the nineties, a man who at a minimum makes six films in one year just in 1995, it is really obvious as has been common in Japanese pinku cinema's history he experimented here because he was allowed to, in a genre which produces these films quickly but has a lax attitude to letting the directors and writers improvise.

Even that the sisters are not actually sisters, and does indulge in a scene which was clearly there for a male audience to have a female-female sex scene, one able to get away with some form of phallus uncensored with a strap-on onscreen, befits the polygamous nature of the film's sexuality. The vampires, even if a potentially problematic metaphor, due to how vague the script is and not fully allowed to be fleshed out, are being used in a fascinating way here in how they led to Kazuhiko waking up sexually beyond his moral original life, but also unfortunately one that becomes destructive uncontrolled. And that is legitimately part of the plot, again in mind to any potential issues with what the metaphor suggests, alongside the whole issue of the film being made with a male gaze. Kazuhiko's sexuality starts to change as he turns, trying to flirt with a guy in a bar than trying to bite him. Again, this has an issue of what the metaphor means, but as that scene is not done as a gay panic moment, it does whilst rush through this section have the film, meant to sell its actresses in explicit sexual scenes, deal with Kazuhiko suddenly developing a libido so strong he is not only having sex with many women, but men too.

The vice comes from his complete lack of satisfaction, ennui, and the finale will be a destructive sexual act. The metaphor is still vague, and a concern in meaning, but with the tone suggesting a subconscious desire through vampirism coming out as a neurosis, and dangerous one with any partner, it is interesting to see Twilight Dinner as a pinku horror film touch, if not perfectly, on a metaphor always intermingled with vampirism, from a country which does not have the mythology naturally in their folklore, and run with it even briefly. The film's murky, minimalistic tone makes it difficult to view as anti-sex or anti-pansexual too, a film which does not really deal with vampires as a supernatural entity barring the blood red moon over an apartment block as the one unnatural form. Personal interpretation does have to be considered, as with the frank fact this is meant to be as much erotica too, but it fascinates as an erotic horror film which is playing with this material even in a format which would be sold for a male audience first.

Eventually the sex has a grotesque side involving the finale hinted at in the prologue, which would put some viewers off, but it feels appropriate. Throughout the film, as a low budget pinku, has a base side, of real bodies and real sexuality even against exaggerated acting in the sex scenes, which can be a factor in putting some off, but feels appropriate for how this deal with transgressive sexuality. Eventually the ending, where someone is literally bitten to death in an intimate area, is gross, but alongside not actually showing as much as you think is also harrowing as a violent act of devouring someone, even getting into taboos when, for no reason when thinking period blood is involved, the female victim is ashamed for a bodily fluid that, whilst natural and not problematic, is seen as a taboo in many culture.

Even as an erotic film, as with other pinku, this feel likes a sibling to many, in multiple sub-genres, which have come from a movie movement so vast, it has constantly led to experiments, flights of fancy, or here eliciting shocks on purpose. Twilight Dinner is not a masterpiece but has many compelling turns as a vampire film, presenting a great surprise as a film and evidence for me of how creatively interesting some of the least examined areas of low budget or outsider cinema/moving images can be.

Gushing Prayer (1971)

 

a.k.a. Gushing Prayer: A 15-Year-Old Prostitute

Director: Masao Adachi (with Haruhiko Arai)

Screenplay: Masao Adachi

Cast: Aki Sasaki as Yasuko; Hiroshi Saitô as Kôichi; Makiko Kim as Yôko; Yûji Aoki as Bill; Shigenori Noda as Arai

An Abstract Candidate

 

The best way to describe Gushing Prayer would be to attempt to explain the film to someone who isn't a cineaste, with a lot of explanation having to be made first. First, you have to explain that, whilst an erotic film usually evokes softcore titillation or in some cases a drama, one exception to that rule was the Japanese "pink" movement where, for every film which was made up into the current day entirely for the sake of titillation, there were exceptions. Especially in the late sixties and seventies, as long as you kept under the low budgets and still had sex, you could make a film about any subject and structure. Adding to this tale would be to talk of Masao Adachi, a screenwriter and filmmaker who, working within the pinku genre with inherently political and unconventional structure, would eventually stop making films just at the time Gushing Prayer was created, joining the communist militant group the Japanese Red Army, and reside in Lebanon for decades until being arrested for passport violations in the 2000s. That this tale ends with Adachi being released from jail, making another film in 2007 (Prisoner / Terrorist) and working onwards, really emphasises both the idiosyncratic context to the film beyond sex and that Gushing Prayer itself is going to be as unconventional.

With George Bataille quoted before coitus and echoes added to voices in certain scenes to add a disconnected mood, this is pinku but with very different aims. Do not come to Gushing Prayer for sex but late sixties into the seventies political avant-garde or you will be sorely disappointed. This comes to sex as a subject for its characters to have to grapple with, four lost teenagers (two boys and two girls) trying to "beat sex", trying to escape their bodies and their sexualities to become something more when the lead among them, fifteen year old schoolgirl Yasuko (Aki Sasaki) has had sex beforehand with her middle age teacher and is expecting child. What this leads to is the quartet trying to overcome sensuality, effectively guilting Yasuko into being a paid prostitute for feeling something with her teacher.

With tanks on parade in the street, the film feels of a tense political time in Japan, the film the penultimate one in the filmmaker's career in his first arch, before The Red Army / PFLP: Declaration of World War (1971), an overtly political piece before his complete separation from the art form for decades. Most porn films, to be blunt, do not have echoing voiceovers on a street taking of being unable to beat sex, and from its female voiceover of various ways an 18-19 year old girl committed suicide to the acoustic guitar score, Gushing Prayer does contrast the genre it is in, even in mind to said genre for the films meant to be erotic having a history of unpredictable and inventive productions. Even its habit, as a monochrome film, to switch to colour is used in provocative ways even if the film has a lot of nudity and sex emphasised by it too. When a son shows his friends his mother having sex in the bedroom to ask whether it is real, even if it is evoking titillation in the sharp turn to warm (reddish) colour, it does provoke a great deal in the context this is happening within when it's a character, quite an unlikable figure but one clearly trapped in a youthful despair, to show his mother in front of his friends having sex and all the baggage that involves. That the film is as well about teenagers rather than adults, despite a history as well in Western cinema of adults playing teenage character who are seen naked and eroticised in even comedies, adds an uncomfortable weight potentially for viewers too.

Honestly, the film itself feels alien in the modern day, an unknowable aspect to its tone and attitude which I can appreciate but in this case as well is in clear danger, despite being only under eighty minutes, of missing a point at all for a viewer, neither the pinku film about eroticism, and feeling of its time in terms of a rebellious avant-garde film, one which is severely limited in its choice of subject and may have lost meaning. Whether a good thing or one Masao Adachi was right to make, this is a film now you have to view with a generation where the idea of youths being this hopeless politically but wishing effectively for either permanently chastity or total mastery on a transcendental level, in a film grounded in its bleak Japanese urban streets, contrasts a world where many forms of eroticisms even merely imagined or faked are prolific, and do not even need other people involved.

What grasps to me however, and will still connect to any viewer, is Yasuko, a figure who you are clearly sympathetic to. Her misanthropic peers, who wish to overcome sex and did not like the fact she broke their rule, are still alienated teenagers trying to grasp at something, refusing a basic part of their world and finding themselves unable to escape it. As the figure in among them who is the centre, Yasuko is a figure who resonates still decades later as a lost figure, able to briefly have a moment of joy, the colour footage returning for her to briefly play in her own daydreams naked as a nymph in an apartment, but the coldness of the world around her eventually crunches down. Deciding to turn the gas on in an oven is the sole option, and the colour comes back to haunt the viewer with blood in a toilet bowl.

It is a difficult film, all whilst never presenting a difficult aesthetic style, but still being a stark and confrontation piece in its tone and presentation. Merely that, with its mind on such a bleak tone and alienating in its genre tropes, Gushing Prayer is difficult to work with. Still with reward, but also a curiosity as a result in its genre and the avant-garde films made at the time. Knowing Masao Adachi was following on, as much as a screenwriter for the likes of Kôji Wakamatsu, on similar pinku films which challenged and rattled against their own genres, not films held as erotic but difficult avant-garde films, make this an interesting glance at them all.

Abstract Spectrum: Philosophical/Stark

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Naked Desire (2015) [RE-REVIEW]

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com
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a.k.a. Onanie Sister Tagiru Nikutsubo

Director: Hideo Sakaki

Screenplay: Kôichi Miwa

Cast: Ui Mita as Akane Kanzaki; Shô Nishino as Kayoko Fukuya; Yasuyo Shiba as Rina Sendô; Shigeru Harihara as Kanzaburô Yamanami; Yûta Kogiri as Shinji Okada; Tadashi Mizuno as Kensuke Saitô; Matarô Umeya as Shigeyuki Kimura; Ayumi Tomiyama as Junko Machioka; Kôichi Miwa as Tejima

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

I know what you're thinking reader - why am I re-reviewing a film just covered a month ago which I didn't like particularly? Simply put, I can write better. Also, there's something more meaningful in returning to a film with hindsight of what already happens in the plot, with the context of what it is, and review it again without discrimination. In fact, contrasting it with the previous review I will link HERE will provide a surprising contrast.

[Spoilers Throughout]

The history of pinku cinema from Japan, as Jasper Sharp has written about in his book Behind The Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema, attests to its virtues. Designed for pure titillation, it however had the advantage that, made on a low budget and creative control being possible, a filmmaker like Kōji Wakamatsu could make the most striking and transgressive films as long as they still qualified as erotica. There are many films made afterwards, such as from the likes of Takashi Zeze, that can attest to the fact you could make cerebral and adult dramas from them, even erotic musicals as Shinji Imaoka can attest to with Underwater Love (2011). There is, however, as much of the cinema which is still titillation and titillation alone, so it varies in quality. OP Eiga, behind the production of Naked Desire, is one of the oldest pinku companies and arguably the producers of the first, Satoru Kobayashi's Flesh Market (1962), so after all these decades they've both a huge historical importance and have made a lot...

Certainly from a premise perspective is fascinating - a pinku that explicitly references the issue of Japan's rising elderly population, the malign yet increasing aging populous depicted in the disabled Sabu, a former political protestor who is being taken care of by Sister Akane (Ui Mita), a literal Christian nun who means that the premise will also involve dealing with Christianity, a small but significant religious minority in Japanese culture, and the issues of said faith against one's sexual desires. Also aesthetically, the fact it's very low budget to the point they a) have to visibly blur out a car license plate and b) blur out cup noodle, with onscreen digital effect, is actually appealing for me in how the lowest budgeted of cinema, far from being detracted from in terms of technical hurdles to climb over, offers a vaster wealth of potential imagination due to these limitations.

I confess a growing fascination for the raw flaws of this type of work in general. Even if the DVD transfer from the DVD I viewed, a 2019 Redemption Films release even on an old TV and old Blu-Ray, is probably one of the worst I have seen, many might be put off by the frankly gristly depiction of sex. Here is a world where a classroom is apparently a set in a roofless shack with a picture of an egg and sperm on a white board and an (uncensored) Adidas football inexplicably near where the sex between school teacher Rina (Yusuyo Shiba) and her student lover Shinji (Yuta Kogiri) takes place,  where even for them, when they flee to the coast with the police after them as he's the dean's son, they first seen sleeping in her car until luck shows they're outside Sabu's house.

An ultra-love budget sex drama set in one main house at the coast could've led to so much interesting creativity, especially as the house is distinctly elaborate and the coastal setting is invocative in its isolation, from the vast plains of browned wild grass to the elaborate stone sea barrier Sabu is found wandering upon later, but I also perversely find as a charm in the grimy, realistic banality as well. Where the female police officer, having an intimate moment by herself watching porn in the office, visibly has a hole in the toe of one of the black socks she is still wearing, or even the perversity of Kayoko (Shou Nishino), a self-proclaimed nymphomaniac free spirit who ends up in the life of Sister Akane and, wanting to bring (sexual) pleasure to Sabu's life, will even consider doing so whilst first helping him on the toilet.

There are obviously two transgressive topics here, that Rina and Shinji are a teacher and her male student which raises a lot of potentially controversy. There's also the fact, as Sabu is through most the film a decrepit old man in his own world, that Kayoko's desire to sexually pleasure him crosses a line of consent that also Sister Akane raises; Kayoko's philosophy, openly speaking of previous examples as a former carer, that a person regardless of age should be allowed to be human and have sensual pleasure, the film potently attempting to tackle this in mind of Japan's growing elder population, does even in a less than intellectual form raise questions about standards of life for a person incredibly incapacitated by illness/age even if the result would obviously be uncomfortable for many viewers. If Naked Desire had been openly transgressive with a purpose, it would've at least been interest even if still uncomfortable. Even if it had been a comedy, it could've done a John Waters and deliberately been bad taste. The issue is that, for its good moments, Naked Desire by its ending falls on an empty conclusion which makes these two plot points, and Akane's existential issues, more trivial.

On another viewing, I like that a lot of the film is a quiet work, literally as there's minimal music on the soundtrack and, barring a porn music bass line that'd be an embarrassment to its ancestors, it's used sparingly. It's a slow burn light hearted drama which has a lot of obviously problematic content to try to juggle, but slowly builds towards what you hope is an ending that deals with all this, at least being compelling and of interest. This is especially the case as the three main woman are the strong central figures who have most of the scenes, the two male figures Sabu, who is a disabled figure, and Shinji the side character whose trajectory is realising he has a fetish for the buttock, not only Rina's but his own being touched which turns into a surprising progressive end reveal.

This isn't concluded upon. In mind, as well, the British DVD removes what is apparently a rape scene, which is an uncomfortable thought even if the film's trying to be a lot more complex and on the side of the female cast, there are aspects that just shoot the film's best virtues in the foot. Say in contrast to Ui Mita actually playing her nun character with a charmingly innocent chastity and yearning to do good, even if there' something odd about her suddenly undoing her hair and masturbating in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary, you have the two male cops, who are absolutely unbearable. Even without the tasteless joke of the pair constantly groping their female side kick, they're played as broadly and sex obsessed as possible, like two obnoxious teenagers whose gurning is embarrassing; one scene, shot in a city centre, where they are lulled by two female sex workers is painful in how broad the duo are. In contrast, you immediately have sympathy for their meek, thin faced female fellow officer, who puts up with them and at least can have a scene of beating up a pervert and the bizarre moment, with the same actress, when she realises a woman in a porn video she is watching looks exactly like herself.

All of this may put off certain readers anyway, a stigma attached to many erotica that it's crass and really gauche. Some of the descriptions of what transpires may have put you the reader off already, and knowledge of what was excised, probably in relation to Kayoko's introductory scene of gladly having sex with two men in a countryside ditch only for her comments that they're practically useless in bed not going down well, doesn't help with the image I have painted of Naked Desire even if the film itself is much more interesting than the synopsis. Naked Desire isn't terrible but you'd feel embarrassed to recommend it, mainly because it never resolves its complex themes at all or hit its fullest potential. Any genre, type and form of cinema and motion images should be defended, all capable of great work, all capable of at least entertainment too. Pinku cinema is the same as, when intelligent and risk taking, it is, when fun and titillating, it is, and in the case of The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai (2003), which became an unexpected cult hit in the West for its many aspects including then-president George Dubya Bush's finger being an unexpected plot point, even hitting a cultural zeitgeist. But it can also miss the mark, as seen in Naked Desire, even if the ending tries its hardest.

It's impossible to forget. The old man, awoken by the police outside his home triggering his memories of being a protestor, suddenly turns into Yukio Mishima during his fatale attempt at a coup d'état in 1970, becoming alive again when the two male police men's arsing about with a megaphone stir up his youthful strength. (The film even references the 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan that caused incredible outcry and political demonstrations as part of Sabu's back story, which should've been ran with further). In probably the most unexpected scene, the youngest cop and Shinji  decide to have sex, in probably the most progressive moment of the whole film as, rather than for comedy, it's seen as two guys regardless of sexuality finding themselves enjoying jumping each other on the kitchen floor, Shinji further finding a higher state of pleasure in his anus, having included a scene earlier of him asking for his to be licked scored to what appeared to be baroque music, and the younger cop finally after all his desperation to get laid getting his wish too. And the main female cast take an actual risk as, on even a very slow moving car, Shou Nishino and Yusuyo Shiba posed naked hanging out the open passenger doors and Ui Mita posing naked in the open car boot, still impressive in allowing themselves to be in such a position on a moving vehicle (and probably freezing as it doesn't look like the scene was filmed on a hot day). It still doesn't completely work mind. That female trio literally become posed models, improvised "artillery" in a sex display in front of open windows, which completely undercuts the fact that they were the strongest and most in control figures of the entire movie and comes off with a demeaning end with Sabu barking orders at them as subservient when there's an obvious, more liberating conclusion where everyone's in control the cops (baring one) are left the losers and sans working car.

Altogether, Naked Desire is slight. A curiosity, completely so, but a reminder (again to Jasper Sharp's tone) that considering how many films are released in the pinku genre still to this day, consistency is variable. This is pertinent as, early in their DVD releases, Redemption Films were releasing some fascinating titles. Films like Tokyo X Erotica (1999) are very idiosyncratic, but it seems that sadly, barring a few fascinating choices I want to visit, Redemption Film's choices have sadly slid into sex films which don't live up to their potential, an utter shame as the British company for a long time (before they focused as much on the US market) did a lot of admirable things, such as their Jean Rollin releases to even debuting Valarie and Her Weekend of Wonders (1970) on DVD in the UK, all in spite of their utterly cheesy Satanic lesbian vampire aesthetic. Naked Desire is more than the sum of its pink DVD cover hidden in the World Cinema DVD section of HMV here in England, and in honestly I have developed a fascination for it as a result of reviewing it twice, but even for titillation, it still the kind of film lost in memory due to some very obvious flaws.

Naked Desire (2015)

a.k.a. Onanie Sister Tagiru Nikutsubo

Director: Hideo Sakaki

Screenplay: Kôichi Miwa

Cast: Ui Mita as Akane Kanzaki; Shô Nishino as Kayoko Fukuya; Yasuyo Shiba as Rina Sendô; Shigeru Harihara as Kanzaburô Yamanami; Yûta Kogiri as Shinji Okada; Tadashi Mizuno as Kensuke Saitô; Matarô Umeya as Shigeyuki Kimura; Ayumi Tomiyama as Junko Machioka; Kôichi Miwa as Tejima

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

I wish I could appreciate Naked Desire, but in lieu to Japanese pinku cinema's history, there's still a lot of films which are just for titillation, something that Jasper Sharp, author of Behind the Pink Curtain can attest to; he wrote in that incredible text of how this medium of softcore sex films, on low budgets, allowed for such openness in creativity directors like Kōji Wakamatsu instead made controversial and political films, but he also attested to the many that have been forgotten on the wayside.

This is pertinent as, early in their DVD releases, Redemption Films were releasing some fascinating titles, many of which belong to the "The Four Heavenly Kings of Pink", four pinku directors (Kazuhiro Sano, Hisayasu Sato, Toshiki Sato and Takahisa Zeze) who started in the late eighties and imploded the genre with innovative work, and other figures who followed after them who took the material into more introspective creativity. Films like Tokyo X Erotica (1999) are very idiosyncratic, but it seems that sadly, barring a few fascinating choices I want to visit, Redemption Film's choices have sadly slid into sex films which don't live up to their potential, an utter shame as the British company for a long time (before they focused as much on the US market) did a lot of admirable things, such as their Jean Rollin releases to even debuting Valarie and Her Weekend of Wonders (1970) on DVD in the UK, all in spite of their utterly cheesy Satanic lesbian vampire aesthetic.

Whilst the prospect of ultra-love budget sex dramas sets in one main house at the coast could've led to so much interesting creativity, Naked Desire just decided to go for sex sells in odd ways. It's particularly an annoying case as the material is there; pinku's reputation is that even if you aren't dealing with highly cerebral work, there could be a wit or even fun to the material, as seen when The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai (2003) became an unexpected cult hit in the West for its many aspects including George Dubya Bush's finger being an unexpected plot point.

The set-up here in Naked Desire is interesting as a premise for a film. A Catholic nun, reminding one of Christianity being a small but historically distinct aspect of Japan, is tending to an old man who is debilitated, a fascinating detail waiting to be used that during the sixties he was a political protester back even at the 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan that caused incredible outcry. Her life is effected by three abrupt guests - one a self-proclaimed nymphomaniac and a free spirit, the other two a female teacher with her young boy lover on the lam from the police, who are hunting them down presuming he's been kidnapped by her. The later pair are a controversial and potential icky choice but considering how pinku has the ability to tackle serious material there's a lot to unpack that could've worked - the chaste nun having to deal with openly sexual figures and how it effects her own sexual desires; the free spirit taking a very controversial stance of the treatment of the nun's patient; and the teacher and student, clearly in love, trying to find their safe spot away from the lives they've left whilst the younger boyfriend is discovering his various fetishes, particularly with his buttocks being fondled.

The set up presents a lot to go with - even with the problematic items at hand, with the addition that the free spirit believes the best way to help the old ailing man is through sex, even when he is not entirely aware of his surroundings, if Naked Desire had been openly transgressive with a purpose it would've at least been interest even if still uncomfortable. Even if it had been a comedy, it could've done a John Waters and deliberately been bad taste. The issue is that, for its moments, Naked Desire feels like a lazy production. The work is incredibly simplistic and flat in telling its tale, following the barest essentials.

I wasn't expecting a vast complex psychodrama of a nun's temptations, but a bit of nuisance about her faith crossing with sexuality should've have reached a point rather than the actress, visibly merely a cosplay outfit at points, masturbating in front of a crucifix in a darkened bare room, which really isn't inspiring and too limp to even consider blasphemous. Even the troubling takes on comforting a disabled old man sexually, or the young student, can be dealt with through far more than the film attempts, frankly half hearted. Even the involvement of side characters doesn't help; the student's male friend, a letch who'll betray his romance behind his back, is unused. As is the two male detectives and female officer sent after him and the teacher. The male cops are the worst part of the film, unfunny and boorish with a bad taste creative choice of them groping the female detective constantly; she in contrast, even here, is at least someone who could've been taken in an interesting direction just if it meant more scenes of her beating up male perverts. That and the quirk of a scene of her masturbating to porn in the office only to wonder whether the actress looks like herself.

Twice already, I've referenced masturbating and far from shame, it's more that there's a clinical lack of pleasure even in a childish way. Probably the biggest failure is that Naked Desire isn't even sexy in a crass way, just purely mechanical. It's a factor to take away from Sharp's book that, for every work his praised to the hilt, he devoted an entire chapter to even how pinku cinema when it slumps crashes badly in the worst. To try to review a sex scene is frankly arbitrary as, in truth, it neither elates nor provokes, merely causes a shrug of the shoulders, something no actor or actress willing to bare themselves even for simulated sex should end up with.

Naked Desire isn't terrible but you'd feel embarrassed to recommend it, which is a shame as, even for work less put together as this film, I have a growing fondness for how formats like video and digital camera recording technology, as well as allowing more people to create films, has produced its own world of infinite possibilities. Rather than use digital camera for big budget films over celluloid, digital should be the place for tiny films which with limited sets, even if I must confuse that the transfer for Naked Desire, for its UK DVD, has one of the worst looking appearances even viewed on an old TV on an old Blu-Ray player up scaling it.

It doesn't deny that, barring some different locations, a film moistly set at a large coastal home, by the beach, which becomes the heated environment of a predominantly female driven cast of characters, with sex and passion bottled up, allows for many tantalising dramatic possibilities, forced to have to improvise a film here over seventy minutes or so with only what one has. Sadly we don't get this, even with the options laid on the table of what to do with three female characters, two proudly sexual and the other conflicted by her duties and desires, with the two males (one wheelchair bond, the other young and naive) offering a minimal budgeted pot-boiler you could work with. Even if meant to be a comedy, intermingling this with erotica, drama and religious existentialism even in a cheesy way would've have been worth it, an enticement with "limited" and "no-budget" filmmaking that, even if the acting and technical quality were to question, you still have resourcefulness and unpredictability. You get predictability here unfortunately, only changing into something memorable in the finale.

It's impossible to forget. The old man suddenly, awoken by the police outside his home triggering his memories of being a protestor, suddenly turns into Yukio Mishima during his fatale attempt at a coup d'état in 1970, shouting like a mad man whilst possessing a lot of "power" between his thighs. Two male characters decide to have sex, in probably the most progressive moment of the whole film as, rather than for comedy, it's seen as two guys regardless of sexuality finding themselves enjoying jumping each other on the kitchen floor. And the female cast, naked, posing on the outside of a car which, even if moving slowly, is still impressive in allowing themselves to be in such a position on a moving vehicle (and probably freezing as it doesn't look like the scene was filmed on a hot day). At least I could leave this bad film with something memorable; the rest however doesn't compensate for anything you've had to sit through, or the moments of crass attitude to the female characters, or the lack of reward.

Antiporno (2016)

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Director: Sion Sono

Screenplay: Sion Sono

Cast: Ami Tomite as Kyōko, Mariko Tsutsui as Noriko

Synopsis: Kyōko (Ami Tomite) is a psychologically disturbed novelist/painter who one morning decides to start tormenting her older female secretary just as a group arrive at her apartment for an interview. Then a voice off-screen shouts "Cut!" with the camera panning to a director and film crew....

Knowing how Antiporno, within the context of Nikkatsu's recent reboot project of the Roman Porno line, is the one that is getting the most vocal interest and critical critique, I cannot help but roll my eyes at the idea this is meant to be a philosophically important film on misogyny in erotica. I intend to revisit Antiporno, and likely to rewatch it, even if this review is still the same in the future, out of fascination of more esoteric and unconventional film making which is my preference. But not only is it embarrassing from a director who was capable of better, but it's also from a film written and directed by a man a retroactive step back in terms of erotica critiquing itself. It's a self critique this Roman Porno Reboot project didn't need, a bigger concern which should've been tackled that there were no female directors chosen for any of the films. A film as obvious and unsubtle as Antiporno is galling as, whilst misogyny and erotica is still problematic, there's a growing source of women actually dominating and creating their own erotica. Photography, literature, comics, even pornographic films. Even pinku, whilst full of utterly offensive work, has its own actresses from the golden era championing their work as progressive and liberating. A film that names itself Antiporno feels like a betrayal of these women who have decided that a more constructive way forwards is to not just keep criticising the past but take control of the pornographic and make their own work surrounding women's desires. Against this Antiporno is not only irritating for me because Sion Sono should be better than this, but also its patronising view on a medium better off from women themselves taking it over, not such a bloody obvious and badly told message.

But God help us if Antiporno, screaming with no indoor voice, is seen as a clever feminist subversion of pornography when it feels like Sion Sono losing more of the qualities he had in his earlier films, effectively making a pretentious remake of a much better film in his early canon called Strange Circus (2005). He encapsulates a strange set of circumstances in modern auteurism where a lot of cult directors who gel the art house with exploitative genre machinations are actually not that different from each other technically or aesthetically - the bright colours, the use of fourth wall or alienation techniques, the extreme levels of violent and sex - and it's to debate whether they actually have anything original to their transgressions when I step back and really question them. As with Park Chan-Wook and Nicolas Winding Refn, Sono dangerously compares himself to earlier era subversive genre directors, even a peer like Takashi Miike, and is in danger of being found wanting.

The problem is the art house sensibility. It should equate meaning. Love Exposure (2008) was such a film. Even a messy film like Suicide Club (2001) is helped by the fact its origins, in Japan's history of churning out genre films in the nineties and early 2000s, films that were inventive and contrasted their naturalistic paces and locations with bizarre events, and were open to idiosyncratic and unpredictable flourishes from their directors. Now after Love Exposure every film I've seen from Sono, even with virtues, feels too deliberate and too serious. Too predictable and increasingly obvious. The violence in films like Cold Fish (2010) became too grim next to their contrasting tonal shifts, Guilty of Romance (2011) whilst a good film too front loaded with cliches, and with Antiporno coming off like a farce. Even if it's a deliberate moment of humour, when an actual cake is pulled out for lead Ami Tomite to smash her face into, whilst making philosophical comments on the sexism of Japanese culture, you get the nadir of Antiporno being something you can take seriously.

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The simplicity to Antiporno's screed on sexuality is the worst aspect, something that a sensible person would've figured out without the film. Wet Woman in the Wind (2016), the other film of this reboot series given as much distribution, does have its problematic moments in terms of its view of sexuality being aggressive and violent at points within its sex comedy plot, but it was also a film where the female protagonist beat up the male one and forced him to comply with her whims. Antiporno's premise and message is so simplistic that, once you brush past its dreamlike structure taken heavily from David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE (2006), it's a whoring of old clichés. A young woman whose parents were puritanical about sex but sexually active themselves. Whose younger sister, never given any depth, committed suicide and plays a one dimensional bright spot for the lead. A life as an artist that is empty and bitter or, depending on how the twists in reality suggest, an assistant for an older, bitter female writer who tormented her as her character in the first scene does to the older woman. All of which feels asinine. An old view on transgression in film for sexuality (a character forced to crawl around like a dog while sexual insults are thrown at her) that feels utterly at odds with the modern day, something post-Salo which feels more like the acts of dictators than libertines. More so as a neglected pinku film like Marquis de Sade's Prosperities of Vice (1988) from Nikkatsu is so much more better made and thoughtful about transgression.

It also doesn't have the overlong first sequence of Antiporno, a cacophony of screaming and torture of the older female secretary as the lead spouts philosophical platitudes. An uncomfortably homophobic taste in how the group of interviewers include stereotypical butch dykes, one of which rapes the secretary with a strap-on until she enjoys it. Sono critiques this as being inherently problematic by being set within a film set, a world within a world where off-stage Tomite's character is a nervous woman tormented and even slapped about by co-stars and the male director. But its stained in a patronising air in how because its meant to be a critique the aggression of the content feels more pointlessly done. Antiporno doesn't deserve being seen as superior because its critiquing this type of scene because its idea that pinku is corrupting, the lead joining a pinku production because she wants to debase herself, is juvenile. In fact its in its own la-la land considering that we live in a world where Hollywood is a hot bed of horrifying sexual harassment and casting couch incidents against actresses.  When the message is obvious, the way Sono also tastefully depicts Tomite laid on a bed with her underwear just peeled under her buttocks or walking through a longue completely naked, following the Reboot project's rules of a sex scene every ten minutes, is such rank hypocrisy.

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As with Park Chan-Wook's The Handmaiden (2016) being somewhat useless as a critique of pornography for its one dimensional villains and gorgeously shot sapphire sex scenes between the feminist heroines, Antiporno is somewhat useless as a pinku critique when there's surely better examples. The comparison to Takashi Miike is especially pertinent. His 1999-2001 works were amongst his most controversial and criticised for their extreme content, especially Ichi the Killer (2001) and Visitor Q (2001), but those films for all their problematic depictions of rape, violence and even necrophilia never treated the content as pleasant, even if there was a sick sense of humour, and always repulsed the viewer. There was always a clearly defined and bitter taste which alongside the complexity of those two examples in how they affected the viewer - the return to a happy family in Visitor Q, how Ichi the Killer deprived viewers of an easy ultra-splatter end fight and reduced its two male anti-heroes as disappointed, psychological messes - which Antiporno doesn't have the courage to do. Whilst his earlier nineties work has some un-defendable content, the stuff Miike made from Audition (1999) onwards makes something like Antiporno amateur in provocative ideas of sexuality including its dark side and gender politics.

Aesthetically Antiporno is interesting. It feels like the uber low budget version of Seijun Suzuki's Taisho trilogy between 1980 to 1991 (Zigeunerweisen, Kagero-za and Yumeji) in their open artificiality. Moments of Antiporno do stand out, such as Kyōko being surrounded by versions of her younger self, but its unfocused symbolism which is not used to its fullest and expanded upon with other connecting symbolism. The bright colours also do not amount to anything but being a superflat postmodernism, a shallowness as deliberate artistry that instead accidentally brings up the film as empty. The political phrases used - such as ”1. This nation’s men are shit! 2. The freedom they created is shit! 3. The world they dream of is shit! “, statements made after Kyōko has her face in the aforementioned cake - are as shallow, the tone suggesting Sono is mimicking Godard for sharp, bullet like statements but forgetting Godard could also become introspective and elaborate with a vulnerability in his language. Its language of an obvious hardcore punk album, not rich enough as a feminist statement. A truly feminist statement has to be lengthier and as willing to wound a feminist back as it would damn misogynistic patriarchy.

Abstract Spectrum: Abstract/Expressionist/Grotesque/Mindbender

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Personal Opinion:

A embarrassing experience and a potential Emperor's New Clothes scenario if it gets a lot of critical praise. A critique of its own erotic film project aiming for the wrong target, not well done if pretty to look at. From a director like Sion Sono, seeing more films like this from him against his superior older films is a dire warning against directors becoming self aware of their critical recognition and trying too hard to appease that crowd.

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Non-Abstract Review: Wet Woman in the Wind (2016)

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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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