The soft­core fem­i­nist romp ush­er­ing in the Roman Porno New Wave

Ear­li­er this year, the famed Japan­ese film stu­dio Nikkat­su announced they were reviv­ing their Roman Porno divi­sion. Part art­house, part soft­core pornog­ra­phy this divi­sion of Nikkat­su thrived dur­ing the 1970s and ​’80s, pre­sent­ing to Japan­ese audi­ences the most ground­break­ing cin­e­ma of the era. With almost com­plete cre­ative free­dom as long as they met the min­i­mum require­ments of hav­ing a sex scene every ten min­utes, they were among the most pro­lif­ic and cre­ative pro­duc­ers of Japan­ese pink films. In an attempt to launch the Roman Porno New Wave, five Japan­ese film­mak­ers have been select­ed to make a film for the series, each with a dif­fer­ent theme. Pre­sent­ed at Montréal’s Fes­ti­val du Nou­veau Cin­e­ma, Anti-Porno rep­re­sents the first wave of this revived smut studio.

Among them is the newest film from art­house wun­derkind Sion Sono, who has daz­zled, offend­ed and shocked audi­ences with films like Love Expo­sure, Tokyo Tribe and Why Don’t You Play in Hell? Work­ing under the theme of ​“art” Sono’s vicious­ly self-ref­er­en­tial Anti-Porno decon­structs the pur­pose of Roman Porno through an exper­i­men­tal meta­tex­tu­al expe­ri­ence. Shot with vibrant sat­u­rat­ed angst, the film por­trays Kyoko (Ami Tomite) as both porno star and inno­cent school­girl, and the increas­ing­ly frac­tured lay­ers of cin­e­ma and life converging.

Toy­ing with fetishis­tic imagery rang­ing from rape-play to gold­en show­ers, Sono skirts with con­tro­ver­sy in his revi­talised film. With some audi­ence mem­bers vis­i­bly per­turbed by his have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too ethos, a blan­ket­ed dis­missal of the film on the basis of its some­times glee­ful por­tray­al of sex­u­al assault, seems unfair. The film bends over its own real­i­ty so many times, the line between fan­ta­sy and fic­tion becomes indis­tin­guish­able and the film’s over­ar­ch­ing mind­scape, dic­tat­ed by a twist­ed teenag­er look­ing to become a ​“whore,” sub­verts sim­ple appraisals of the film’s real/​not real sex­u­alised violence.

As Kyoko aspires to be ​“a whore” her jour­ney to become the future star of Roman Pornos is often an elic­it path paved with shame and con­fu­sion. With bit­ing­ly satir­i­cal scenes that poke fun at the shame­ful dis­course sur­round­ing sex, an ado­les­cent Kyoka sits at the fam­i­ly din­ner table and asks her par­ents about their night­ly romps. For her, it seems unfair that she’s taught about how evil and dirty sex is, while her par­ents indulge near con­stant­ly in their insa­tiable hunger for each oth­er. Neglect­ed and heart­bro­ken after her sister’s sui­cide, she wants to expe­ri­ence the promised con­nec­tion that sex offers but is over­whelmed by the shame of her desires.

The film’s sex scenes are numer­ous, as dic­tat­ed by the only real rule of the Roman Porno. They are eclec­tic, vibrant and sur­re­al – treat­ed with rare artistry and imag­i­na­tion. One sex scene in par­tic­u­lar stands out in spite of last­ing just a few sec­onds long. Deep into the twist­ing labyrinthi­an mem­o­ries and fan­tasies of Kyoko she opens up a large white cake box, to look down at minia­ture ver­sions of her par­ents mak­ing love. Clear­ly inspired by Lynch and Mul­hol­land Dri­ve in par­tic­u­lar, Sono threat­ens to unrav­el the social struc­tures that keep sex under lock and key.

As Sono has faced con­tro­ver­sy in the past for his vio­lence against women, Anti-Porno feels par­tic­u­lar­ly refresh­ing. It is at times self-indul­gent but ulti­mate­ly sides on the untapped sex­u­al imag­i­na­tion of women. Clos­er in spir­it to art­house films like Valerie and her Week of Won­ders than an out­right exploita­tion film, the film por­trays a sex­u­al awak­en­ing under the pres­sures of a repressed soci­ety. The vio­lence that was present and con­tentious in Sono’s ear­li­er films Cold Fish and Tokyo Tribe. where women are abused and objec­ti­fied to sat­is­fy male desire, are replaced by the com­plex and often per­vert­ed desires of the near­ly all-female cast. Although still oper­at­ing under the con­fines of shame and patri­ar­chal pow­ers, this yearn­ing for escape and sex­u­al solace over­rides the film’s more trou­bling inci­dents. The masochis­tic desires of Kyoko are both lib­er­at­ing and a reflec­tion of her shame­ful upbring­ing, exist­ing in a pow­er­ful dual­i­ty of oblig­a­tion and longing.

Sat­u­rat­ed and abstract, Sono seems to be the per­fect fil­ter for the revived Roman Porno house. Liv­ing up to the promise of deliv­er­ing a sex scene every 10 min­utes and wild inven­tive­ness, Anti-Porno daz­zles and offends in equal mea­sure, offer­ing up a real­i­ty-bend­ing jour­ney into the world of soft­core pornog­ra­phy. Bring­ing pornog­ra­phy back into the cin­e­mas, Nikkatsu’s future projects with­in the series are worth keep­ing an eye on as art and sex con­verge for a lusty audience.