Review by Ben Bussey
Sex, mental illness, Japan: these are at the heart of both these films. I should stress straight away that, while I’ve chosen to review the films together, they are not being sold together; they are from neither the same filmmakers nor the same distributor, and were made almost two decades apart. However, given how close they are in concept and theme, Tokyo Decadence and Guilty of Romance make for an appropriate double bill. That said, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend watching them back to back, unless you relish the prospect of spending around four hours being numbed by the sight of emotionally bankrupt individuals degrading themselves in the desperate search for something resembling feeling. A thought-provoking evening’s entertainment, for sure, but not likely to leave you in a particularly sunny state of mind.
I feel I should also confess right away that Tokyo Decadence has been sitting on my shelf for a couple of months now; it was released back-to-back with The Cheerleaders/Revenge of the Cheerleaders (now there’s some strange bedfellows) as the first releases of new Arrow sub-label Arrowdrome Erotic. At first I told myself the reason I put off writing it up was that I didn’t think it was entirely appropriate for Brutal As Hell; not an argument that holds up, I admit, given that I went ahead and reviewed the decidedly non-horror Cheerleaders movies. No, the truth of it is I avoided writing it up because I was intimidated. Yes, I said it. We hardened, unfeeling web critics can still be colossal fannies on occasion. I was intimidated because Tokyo Decadence is a hard film to surmise; straightforward in narrative terms, but more complex on a psychological level. Then, on sitting down to watch Guilty of Romance, I couldn’t help but note the many similarities between the two films. As well as both being made in Japan and centring on young women in the sex trade, both films defy genre boundaries and easy explanation. However, I can confidently declare this much about both: they may focus heavily on sex, but I would not class either of them as erotic films. The sex here is compulsive, cold, hard, emotionless, with very little pleasure involved.
Tokyo Decadence AKA Topâzu (1992) was written and directed by Ryū Murakami, adapted from his own novel (and if you needed further evidence that this is not going to be a happy tale, Murakami also wrote the source novel of Audition). Miho Nikaido stars as Ai, a young woman who works as an S&M prostitute. Taking an almost fly-on-the-wall approach, the film follows Ai through a series of jobs in which either she or the client is humiliated. The big question, however, is quite how and why someone as extraordinarily shy, naïve and insecure as Ai got into this line of work; but as much as she is employed to fill some kind of void for her clients, it becomes clear that Ai has quite a void of her own in need of filling (stop sniggering at the back).
Very much an arthouse film, Tokyo Decadence unfolds at a languid pace, shot mostly in long takes with minimal dialogue and music, subsequently leaving the S&M content as the main focal point. Little surprise, then, that the film has a chequered past with censors worldwide: one of the earliest NC-17s in the US, it was banned outright in Australia and South Korea, and had around twenty minutes trimmed (presumably by the distributors) before being first submitted to the BBFC. Now granted an uncut UK release for the first time, it’s not hard to see why the prudes were not amused given the presence of dildos, erotic asphyxiation, piss-drinking and so on. Given how little there is in the way of plot, we can imagine how easily the censors could dismiss such scenes as ‘decontextualised depravity’ and claim this as justification for their censorship, much in the way the BBFC recently justified banning The Bunny Game. Such an argument would, of course, be very lazy indeed; just because Murakami doesn’t spell things out for us in black and white doesn’t mean there’s nothing going on between the lines. It’s not the easiest film to read, I’ll grant you, but it’s definitely saying something about the potentially destructive power of desire; kind of like Hellraiser, but without all the murder, regenerated corpses and extradimensional sadomasochists. Oh, and in case there was ever any doubt that censors are harsher on independent arthouse films than they are on mainstream studio output, it’s worth noting that Tokyo Decadence was released in the same year that the global box office was dominated by Basic Instinct.
By contrast with Murakami’s film, Shion Sono’s Guilty of Romance AKA Koi no tsumi (2011), while still not exactly laugh-a-minute stuff, is not quite so dour an affair. Aesthetically it’s far more stylised, with a bold colour scheme and prominent use of piano-based classical music; there is a thick, dark streak of humour underlying proceedings; there are moments, however brief, in which the participants do seem to be taking actual satisfaction from their debauched behaviour. (And, if I may be entirely candid, I pity anyone who can take no pleasure from the sight of Megumi Kagurazaka in states of undress. I am a feeble, predictable straight male who crumbles at the sight of women’s breasts, and hers are astonishing.) Factor in the framing device of a murder mystery – the action intermittently flashing forward to police officers investigating the gruesome homicide of an initially unidentified woman – and the result is a considerably more accessible, conventionally plot-driven film than Tokyo Decadence. Even so, it’s still liable to push the panic buttons of the prudish.
Izumi (Kagurazaka) is the image of a dutiful housewife, wed to successful novelist Yukio (Kanj Tsuda) who specialises in romantic fiction yet is emotionally detached in everyday life. Working away from home, he leaves at the same time every morning and gets back at the same time every night, and given how fastidiously Izumi ensures his slippers and tea are ready it’s apparent he has beaten this routine into her, figuratively or literally. Anxious to get out, Izumi timidly persuades Yukio to let her take part-time work, which she finds at a supermarket deli handing out free samples of sausage (told you there was humour). Here she is approached and offered work by a woman who claims to be a modelling agent; either through naïveté or a desperation for any kind of a new life experience, Izumi accepts, and inevitably the work turns out to be in porn. But as she tumbles further down the rabbit hole of her new double life, Izumi encounters Mitsuko (Makoto Togashi), a woman leading quite the double life of her own as both a prostitute and a literature professor. Mitsuko takes Izumi under her wing and teaches her the trade, kind of like a Yoda or Mr Miyagi in clear heels. But – if this really needs to be said – Mitsuko clearly has major issues, and is lining Izumi up for something more than just selling her body.
I’m not sure if I’m at a significant disadvantage having to date never seen any of Shion Sono’s other films, but he’s a filmmaker I’ve long since heard good things about; I understand this is the final part of his ‘hate’ trilogy, following from Love Exposure and Cold Fish. It doesn’t seem unfair to assume that Murakami’s film may have influenced Sono’s work here, but we certainly couldn’t class it as a rip-off. Many reviews have also noted echoes of Belle De Jour, which are readily apparent. However, considering the film as a product of 2011, it’s also easy to relate it to the likes of A Serbian Film and Red White and Blue; it’s not that I assume either to have necessarily been a direct influence, but rather that in common with those films Guilty of Romance seems symptomatic of a new breed of extreme psychosexual melodrama, wherein the ferocity and joylessness of the onscreen sexual activity results in scenes more unnerving than most screen violence.
I’ll admit, I do find it difficult to discern quite what the overriding message of either Tokyo Decadence or Guilty of Romance really is. In a curious way, neither film is too far removed from the kind of early exploitation that Doris Wishman pioneered; films which purport to be cautionary tales demonstrating the terrible consequences of sin, whilst gleefully displaying as much sinful behaviour as possible. We meet both Ai and Izumi on slippery slopes, and the implication is that neither of them have any hope of getting back up again. Are we then to interpret these films as condemning open female sexuality, and by association reaffirming the patriarchal order? Or are these instead films of a feminist leaning, highlighting how women are demonised within this patriarchy? Or, as an IMDb reviewer says of Guilty of Romance, are they simply “a constant male masturbation fantasy with a few literature references tossed in to justify it?” Neither film presents easy answers, but each raises questions worth pondering. Once again, an appropriate double bill in thematic terms, but be warned that watching them back to back could potentially have a seriously detrimental effect on your libido.
Tokyo Decadence is available now on DVD from Arrowdrome Erotic; Guilty of Romance is released to DVD and Blu-Ray on November 28th from Eureka. (Note that the Guilty of Romance Blu-Ray also features the original cut, some 30 minutes longer than the cut reviewed here.)