In the Realm of the Senses

Saw In the Realm of the Senses, a frankly erotic film made in Japan and distributed by a French production house (so you know it's gonna be pretty crazy. They couldn't even find a Japanese distributor for this nuttiness.) It's a fictionalized version of the exploits of Sada Abe. The film is fairly lurid, more shocking than revealing. It's fairly edgy for a drama but fairly tame for a porno. All of the naughty bits are on display and there's a ton of sex happening but the focus of the film is on the spiraling, mutually-destructive love affair between the concubine Sada and married gigolo Kichi.

The film has many interesting artistic flourishes. For example, their relationship starts in the depths of winter. Spring or summer would make more sense, but instead their fiery passion lies in contrast to the weather. Later, as the relationship becomes debauched and veers into dangerous excesses, it becomes spring. This inversion of the normal symbolism of romance feels off-kilter and bizarre. Based on a true story as it is though there's some parts that don't make thematic sense, such as her intellectual customer on the side who pops up now and again.

But yes, there's a lot of sex. You see fellatio, penises and vaginas. It's very frank and usually fairly sexy. The film is not as progressive as you might think based on this however. It only gets away with all of this flopping genitalia by ultimately being kind of schoolmarmish-ly dour about their relationship. It starts off passionate but the passion never fades. This sounds great, but their romance veers into bizarre, controlling areas. Knives make repeated appearances, with associated symbolism involving penetration, blood and slits. The final, violent ending serves as a prim reminder for us to stick with missionary position for the sake of procreation. It's a kind of inverse Romeo and Juliette, focusing less on romance than on sex and ending not with a beautiful tragedy but with an ugly tragedy. I wish the film had been a bit kinder in its ending but that of course would not mirror reality and would have been cheating.