IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES Movie Review

Ai No Corrida

Japan's Nagisa Oshima based his 1976 film on an actual murder case that took place in Japan in 1936. A woman had strangled her lover to death during intercourse, after which she cut off his penis and carried it around with her until the police arrested her. (It had to be love; after all, Lorena Bobbitt simply tossed her husband John's freshly severed penis out of the car window.) The actual case was a sensation, and Oshima's film version was as well. The graphic sexuality depicted in the film, and the dangerous practice of heightening excitement through asphyxiation, were absolutely essential elements in demonstrating how and why the murder happened; still, Oshima had such a controversial movie on his hands that the previously obscure filmmaker—whose serious, fascinating works such as Boy and Death by Hanging had been shown primarily only at film festivals outside of Japan—suddenly found himself at the center of a publicity-generating censorship battle. In the Realm of the Senses isn't terrible by any stretch, but its high-toned, painterly, coffee-table-book style does suggest art house porn gussied up just enough to be called “erotica.” The couple's desperate, nearly non-stop couplings begin to provoke titters after a while, although Oshima understands that there's a vein of humor inherent in the material, and he lets it break through on occasion. (In the realm of special effects, however, it must be noted that the man's post-surgical member still seems semi-erect; a neat trick considering it was still decades before Viagra.) The film was widely suppressed, and in fact U.S. Customs prevented its public showing at the 1976 New York Film Festival (the press screening went on as scheduled, I'm happy to report). There were still censorship problems, even after it won American distribution. In Detroit, for example, those waiting in line to see it on its scheduled opening day found it was replaced by Rocky. Not such a strange substitute, since Rocky was another guy who went the distance.

NEXT STOP … Last Tango in Paris, Damage, The Woman Next Door

1976 (NC-17) 105m/C JP FR Tatsuya Fuji, Eiko Matsuda, Aio Nakajima, Meika Seri; D: Nagisa Oshima; W: Nagisa Oshima; C: Hideo Ito; M: Minoru Miki. VHS FXL, CVC