Oshima, Fourth Encounter, In the Realm of Senses

In the Realm of Senses (I no corrida, made in 1976), a movie that's extremely painful to be watched. One hour and a half of hard porn. What starts casually is getting more and more horrible, down to the intolerable end.

I already knew Oshima from the other three movies I had watched, so I tried to get a clue. I knew him as a rebel against any values, any taboos, so I thought this was a deconstruction of Japanese cultural traditions, that aesthetic with delicate sexual suggestions, all geisha poetry and so on; no, says Oshima, all these traditions are just bulshit, it's a voyeuristic society, sexually obsessed. Well, it is some symbol like this in the movie - only it's wrong to focus on this path: it's not the main idea.

The movie takes place in the thirties: Japan was living the pleasures of conquering one Asian country after another: a hedonism of war and victories. Was Oshima creating here a symbol for their military drunkenness, leading ultimately to self destruction? Well, maybe - but this interpretation doesn't lead you too far, either; it's just to simple to reduce this movie to history and politics.

Actually the movie narrates a real case that took place in Tokyo in 1936. I found it on the web: Oshima did not add anything. The owner of a hotel started a casual affair with one of the maids. What followed was a period of uninterrupted sex and an ever growing mutual dependence. She was forbidding him to leave even for peeing.

Finally she began strangling him up to a certain point, as this was increasing his pleasure during orgasm. And he asked her to strangle him up to the end. After he died she cut his genitalia, to keep them for ever. As simple as that:)



Oshima just narrated the story, not adding anything, not forgetting anything. Hard porn in real life, hard porn in the movie. Did he want to challenge us? Our stupid conventions, our shameful lies, our two penny principles? Maybe. Still I think the movie is more profound.

Did he want to study the dynamics of an affair that started casually to become madness? To find out the truth about all that love means? Pleasure of sex, pleasure to dominate, pleasure of being dominated? Search for pleasure, search for absolute? Or just to pull out a moral lesson? After all, once common morale considers extramarital sex a sin, there is no more a compass to tell you where to stop once you're in.

How to find a sense in a fact beyond common sense? I think it's much simpler: this movie is just a narration of the fact. Oshima did not make judgments, he just told the story, as it was. A reenactment. Letting aside the common sense and celebrating all the five physical senses. I know it sounds horrible. But a story beyond good and evil deserves just that, a honest narration: which is a celebration. And believe me, this movie is a gorgeous celebration.

(Japanese New Wave)