In the Realm of the Senses

Questions? Comments? Is it porn?

nope. nope. nope.

No, it’s certainly not designed merely for sexual titillation, it makes interesting points about gender power balance and social convention overturned. I don’t see why people should be squeamish about something that virtually everyone on the planet does, and usually quite often- a perfectly natural act, and nudity, erect male members etc are hardly anything for public shame or condemnation. It says something about sick constricted societies that we should consider sex acts simply pornographic. There are too many hang-ups over this compared with say, killing, violence, warfare- often represented as heroic and courageous, when basically murder. Of course, In the Realm of the Senses might be considered extreme- we don’t all take even kinky sex to such lengths (or there wouldn’t be many of us left), but most films with killings don’t cause public outcry or get banned, considered even criminal.

I was once trying to encourage a female work colleague to see some of my favourite Japanese films, such as Sansho the Bailiff- she took some persuading that they weren’t all going to be like In the Realm of the Senses, the only Japanese film she’d seen, and had not correctly anticipated!

Don’t walk to hog this thread, but the film’s been a major influence on Catherine Breillat: “i wouldn’t otherwise have been able to make Romance. It made me understand that an image is not pornographic in itself, it’s the way we look at it.”. I have the impression female directors are often more comfortable or more interested in filming sexual and erotic content.

Malkovich, Makovich, Malkovich…

I’d be interested in what other people think of the ending- is it shocking, is it portrayed and intended to be considered as an act of love and acceptable, is it a triumph of feminism, or should it be considered depravity deserving heavy punishment?

“To think of Sada as a murderess shocks me….Sada and Kichizo may seem to be libertines in the beginning but they move towards a form of sanctification and i hope everyone understands that” (Oshima)

it was a perfect ending for a passionate love beyond moral and law. They are extreme characters, but i wasn’t schocked at all by the end of the film, i found it to be a very poetic and desperate conclusion to an excellent film.

It’s hard to watch. Not because of the violence but because of the way Oshima shoots Tatsuya Fuji’s face. I get the sense that with a single frame Oshima suggests a kind of compassion that is no longer simply psychical. It’s that kind of compassion ( that Oshima rarely shows) that prevents the film from being accused of being any type of pornography, at least in my opinion.

Here’s wikipedia on Sada

I’ve never seen this film yet.

But I’ve heard about it, and people always compare it to curious yellow and Salo (which I’ve seen). Those movies (especially Salo) are pretty much porn, and no artistic sensibility can ever redeem them.

Robert, it isn’t one of my favorite movies, but it certainly isn’t porn.

^

Ok, I think I was a little too hard on it, especially from a guy like Pasolini who considered himself an artist. But I just don’t see what kind of message he could of portrayed with that one. It was really poor in taste and not one of his best.

Fascism is disgusting, Salo (actually quite a measured film) reflects that

Ai No Corrida is less alienating- the sale of eggs rose apparently

I watched it last night and haven’t quite worked out what to make of it yet. Obviously not porn. I found it intriguing but also disturbing in parts – and I didn’t enjoy the ending. By the ending though I don’t mean the strangulation, that had a certain narrative symmetry, somehow, but the severing of his body parts. Amazingly, though, that is based on a real even that happened in Tokyo – so I feel robbed of the opportunity of accusing the director of excess.

I’m not sure that I’d describe this as a film about love, though – I’d go with obsession and, ultimately, insanity. But then I suppose it depends how we choose to define all these different terms. In that way the film is a bit like a Rorscach test, isn’t it – the film could be anything, what our individual responses tell us is just more about ourselves and our own views of the world – or love. obsession, etc in this case.

It’s an odd film. It’s almost purely Japanese in some context, but almost antithetically Japanese in another.

It’s a film based on an historical truth, made almost into myth in its popularity. It uses what was essentially all the available evidence (Abe’s intense sexual desire was apparently how she actually was) so the relative “truth” element is much more prevalent than in Oshima’s other works. And the film is made as a confrontation to the “golden” age of the 30’s that the generation before him claimed it was.

But it was made with French financing. It was edited in France. It has never been shown uncensored in Japan. And in a certain aspect it creates a totality in a singular case. Linking the sort of obsessive attempt to insulate oneself from the outside world through sex with the capacity that the Japanese have for insulating themselves from an outward negative (in this case fascism).

It’s not porn because it’s not about sex. It’s about obsessive insularity, which sometimes fetishizes and perverts reality. The inherent truth of this, however, is seen in the Japanese porn industry (second in the world only to the U.S.).