Based upon a true incident in 1930s Japan, Nagisa Oshima's controversial film effectively skirts the borderline between pornography and art -- making Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris of four years earlier look like children's programming in comparison. The story concerns servant and former prostitute Sada Abe (Eiko Matsuda) who becomes sexually obsessed with her employer Kizicho (Tatsuya Fuji), a businessman, after seeing him making love to his wife. After making love to Sada, Kizicho
becomes obsessed with her as well. As their love-making becomes more and more intense, they find themselves unable to separate themselves from each other, until every waking hour is spent in more and more dangerous sexual acts with Sada becoming more and more of the aggressor. Finally, for the ultimate in eroticism, Kizicho agrees to be strangled during sexual ecstasy for the ultimate in orgasmic fulfillment. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
That graphic sexual expression is the narrative currency Oshima uses to explicate a connection between sex and death only adds to the film's incalculable power to provoke, offend, frighten, and spellbind its audience.
Oshima holds nothing back. Yet watching the couple's constant lovemaking is the very opposite of erotic. Which may very well be the point. Sada and Kichizo's fantasy world is strictly private; it doesn't just shut out society, it excludes the viewer too.
Declaring yourself bored by a movie full of explicit sex may sometimes mark you out as a dreary pseudo-sophisticate, but in this case it's fair enough.
Unsanitised, worryingly convincing in its sadomasochistic detail, this is seriously provocative cinema, a telling reminder of what it really means to be dangerous.
As the soundtrack moans in sympathy while the deep crimson colours dazzle in delirium, the entire movie comes desperately close to approximating the pell-mell emotional turmoil of sex itself. Not porn, sex.
I can only imagine critics at the initial screening ... marveling at a 20-foot penis taking up the entire screen: "Oh yeah, that totally represents the patriarchy."
Like his characters, Oshima is determined to explore and transgress sexual boundaries, if they even exist, by posing a challenge to conventional morality. [Blu-ray]
I believe the children are the future, teach them well and let them lead the way. Or, conversely, you could violently yank a four-year-old boy's winkie and make him grow up begging to be choked unto orgasm. Your call.
Baring much more than bodies, Oshima delves deeply into subconscious carnal desires under the influence of society, and the eternal human contradictions between liberating sexual impulses and erotic enslavement.
A beautiful, but very adult, film. The story is very powerful and kinda crazy, but I think it was actually based on a true story! An excellent movie about obsession.
Fascinating tale of two lovers who become so obsessed with each other that it eventually consumes them. I lost count as to how many times this couple had sex but it was a LOT. If there ever was a film that could have benefited from a little 'product placement' of Viagra, this would be that film.
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