Review of In the Realm of the Senses (1976) by Leonardo - Malacay - S — 20 Jan 2009

For most of this film's running time, I thought it was losing the battle between artistically exploring eroticism and merely being pornographic. And by the way, it's way more explicit than I imagined: penises (both flaccid and erect) galore, fellatio, penetration, this movie's got it all.

But it wasn't until the film moved inexorably to its doomed third act that it really took hold, at which point I felt like the film was exerting an extraordinary grip on my attention by virtue of its singular concentration.

In retrospect, Oshima's cool and elegant approach to framing the film's explicit content creates a hypnotic effect. If there's a larger socio-cultural critique here, the specifics of it escape me.

I couldn't place the time (I was thinking 19th century when it's really on the cusp of World War II), and the atmosphere seems entirely subjective and so full of sexual charge that the whole film feels like David Foster Wallace's description of the AVN Awards.

Sounds like a winner, right?