Pleasures of the Flesh

NEW 35mm PRINT!  │  The prolific Oshima took a three-year break from feature filmmaking in the early 1960s, working in television and short documentary instead, before returning with Pleasures of the Flesh, a harbinger of In the Realm of the Senses. The film crosses a stinging critique of Japan’s “economic miracle” with the erotic aesthetics of Japan’s soft-core, so-called “pink films.”  It concerns Wakizaka, a young, alienated white-collar worker who has been jilted by Shoko, the woman he loves. Wakizaka has committed murder for Shoko, but she doesn’t know it: he’s killed the man who once raped her and has been blackmailing her. Wakizaka, in turn, is being blackmailed by a witness to the murder: Hayami, a government official about to be imprisoned for embezzlement. Hayami bargains to have Wakizaka hold his embezzled fortune in safekeeping. Wakizaka decides instead to squander it on a year-long binge of sexual abandon involving hookers and hypermodern “love hotels” — until fate reunites him with Shoko. Oshima’s subversive take on desire and death, crime and capitalism, and sexual liberation and political liberation was adapted from a Futaro Yamada novel entitled Pleasure Inside the Coffin. “A brilliant stylistic exercise on a sensual subject” (Max Tessier). Colour, 35mm, in Japanese with English subtitles. 90 mins.