Diagonaldi Very well executed

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

lasttimeisaw It goes without saying Ôshima's succès de scandale is not for the squeamish, its blatantly hardcore content (unsimulated sexual activity including fellatio, fornication, and a puckish egg-hatching prank) shatters the last defense of anyone's reserves about human copulation, thus topples it from its tabooed sanctuary, then demythologizes it with a pretension-free candidness and boldly burrows into the subject of the often oppressed and sidelined female sexuality, yes, it is actually based on a true story occurred in the 1930s.When Sada Abe (Matsuda), a former prostitute who works as a maid in a hotel in Tokyo, first lays her eyes on her employer Kichizo Ishida (Fuji), it is in the middle of the conjugal duty between him and his wife Toku (Nakajima), a passionless, ritualistic rumpy-pumpy that bewitches her. So when a virile Kichizo takes a fancy to her, something irrepressible is ignited, their illicit affair spreads like wide fire, they stay together in various inns, entertained by sundry geisha, and from then on, Ôshima leverages their indoor activities interrupted only by necessary outings, viz., when Sada has to tide themselves over by way of solicitation, or Kichizo is bound to visit home for a three-day stint. It is these seemingly short separations and its resultant jealousy that torment both, and spur them into more extreme measurements in their sexological exploration, until Sada finds the button of choking Kichizo during penetration to sate her libidinous upswing, whereupon she must keep pushing it.What mesmerizes viewers is Ôshima's unsparing portrayal of Sada's randiness and her ingrained phallus worship, every waking minute she seeks for Kichizo's private parts, the fact that she completely overpowers him, dominantly rides on him, has him do her bidding, could be any man's worst nightmare, yet there is truth in the discrepancy between male and female's orgasms, and what if a man cannot sexually satisfy a woman he loves? A perpetual dread hovering every heterosexual man's ego and occasioning chasm if mistreated, we must hand it to Ôshima for his audacity to lay it open like this, however radical it looks, and demands us to re-examine the different vibes in man and woman's sexual equilibrium. Conversely, all Ôshima's effort, essentially de-eroticizes and desensitizes sex itself when we are inured to their oversexed indulgence, it is not amorous, not aesthetic, not even orthodoxly arousing, which causes it to be subsumed into an act solely stimulated by primeval desire. If one puts their perversion under the milieu, it can be feasibly read as a resistance towards the ethos of its time, and Ôshima's anti-militarism disposition writs large in the segment where Kichizo glumly passes by a band of marching army, on the opposite direction with the flag-waving populace. Both Matsuda and Fuji brave themselves for their controversial roles, an unsparing devotion to the art form even with the foregone conclusion that the film would impinge on their acting careers, while Matsuda thoroughly incarnates Sada's undue possessiveness, insatiable lust and hellbent conviction of going whole hog, Fuji's wayward resignation is much more telling in his shiftless head space that disillusion and malaise might be the more pertinent cause behind his destructive behavior, both deserve to be put on a pedestal for their earth-shattering derring-do along with the film itself, a sui generis cause célèbre that throws away human's last fig leaf to state its sharp-edged point.

cinemajesty Film Review: "In The Realm Of The Senses" (1976)At the time of release at Berlin Film Festival in February and Cannes Film Festival in May 1976 respectively, the motion picture "In The Realm Of The Senses" had been split open a controversy in a emerging wave of new limits-testing cinema in the 1970s, if two actors have unsimulated sexual intercourse on-screen becomes porn; in an chamber play drama written and directed by Nagisa Ôshima (1932–2013) concerning the characters of Ishida & Abe finding to each other in a remote countryside hotel to sessions of endless sex under a deeply sunken emotion to escape the outside world of mobilizing pre-world-war-2 Japan.Director Nagisa Ôshima denies the picture any visual layers of filtering the on-screen actions, so that the sex scenes present themselves honest with no stylization concerning high contrast lighting or shifting camera movements. Actress Eiko Matsuda and actor Tatsuyo Fuji are in such a prepared state of method acting that the full frontal camera angles became a mirror for them to embrace themselves as complete entity of a cinematic piece of art, which may deny the audience any releasing moments in 100 minutes toward an absolute ending.Nevertheless any spectator, who brings time and patience to watch the film in one, will agree that "In The Realm Of The Senses" has been the first motion picture to expose sexuality as a natural drug, which lets human being escape from reality to feel whole again as in mother's womb of 360 degree-surrounding closed-up spaces for the time being, exceeding the use of synthetic drugs or alcohol due to a physical merger of two bodies, yet not less dangerous in unbalanced dosage.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

Style_is_Substance Director Nagisa Ôshima was once quoted saying "My hatred for Japanese cinema includes absolutely all of it." These are quite pompous words from someone who has made such a bad film as "In the Realm of the Senses." I decided to wait a few weeks to let this film sink in for me so that I am able to develop my thoughts; not only do I now stand by disliking this film, but I have actually grown to detest it more upon contemplation. At the time of this writing, I have not seen any other films by Ôshima, and interestingly, I would not be against it as it is clear he has some talent. Throughout "In the Realm of the Senses", the audience can conclude that the film is well made in terms of mise en scène and I would even go as far to call some shots beautiful. The problem I have with the film is not how something is shown, but the context of which what is shown. The film has inspired Gaspar Noé to direct his explicit film Love, which I have previously reviewed and consider to be one of the best films of 2015. This fact and its inclusion on the Criterion Collection drew my interest, however I was quite disappointed. A few minutes in, we see in a rather cringe worthy scene, children throwing snowballs at the private parts of an old man sleeping in the snow only to be followed by the lead character caressing his cold genitals in up- close detail. At this point, I realized the film would be more reminiscent of erotic schlock like "9½ Weeks" than it would intelligent psycho- sexual dramas like "Eyes Wide Shut." Scenes like this contribute little to nothing to the overall narrative; which the narrative in fact is mostly constructed by one pointless scene after another until it meets the third act where the elements it builds upon actually start to lead somewhere. While the film is admittedly brave in what it chooses to show, it is ultimately aimless and inconsistent. In some scenes, there is conflict between the two regarding unfaithfulness; in others, it is defenestrated. In some scenes, the affair is meant to be kept secret; in others, the two have sex in public. Some scenes are bleak and imply realism, while others are hackneyed and corny including a scene in which an elderly lady watches the two have sex as she laughs and comments on the beauty of youth, which more or less happens twice with two different elderly women. There are at least two scenes of rape, which aids in neither the plot nor the characters it involves. The film's shock value loses its quality and becomes embarrassing. I would say the explicit nature of the film in theory does not upset or offend be, but I'd be lying if I didn't include one scene that legitimately bothers me. This particular scene is fortunately shot from afar and begins with two children (one boy, one girl) playing with each other while randomly running around naked. The boy is stopped by the lead female character who then yanks on his young penis leaving him shouting out that he is hurt by her. Not only does the scene appear to border child molestation and possibly documented abuse, but it also serves absolutely nothing to the story. The film goes on and on like this with interchangeable and ultimately irrelevant scenes for some time.The third act is when the director actually takes the characters somewhere after much worthless malarkey that preceded it. The heightening dangers and perverseness of the characters are displayed in an intimate way as the two engage in the unhealthy taboo of choking one another. The film lacked such intimacy previously between the two leads, and ultimately the greatest scenes within this film is not brought to its fullest potential and feel watered down to me due to its lackluster first two acts leading here. The final moments of the film are fine, just fine. They are nothing special. There could be more buildup leading to its conclusion, but it's ultimately just okay at best at this point. While 2015's Love used this film's aesthetics as an outline to examine a relationship and case study on sex in an entertaining, intelligent, and intimate manner, "In the Realm of the Senses" butchers its best moments by settling within its perverse, corny, and shallow qualities. This is truly a bad, ugly, and unintelligent film disguised as something holding special significance.

artur-artborg I've tried and failed to find the words to properly describe my sentiments regarding Nagisa Oshima's "Ai no korīda". Fortunately, as it turns out, a fictional character from a popular American TV- series sums up my sentiments exactly: STAN MARSH: "Dude, this is some ****ed up s*** right here!" I couldn't agree more with Mr. Marsh.I am quite frankly incapable of understanding how anyone anywhere could fail to recognize Oshima's film as a piece of pornography. I do not believe that this opinion makes me a prude; when an over-whelming majority (around 4 of every 5) of the scenes in the film depict graphic non-simulated sex, that means that it is a pornographic motion picture, regardless of how well-shot it is.I consider the film atrocious, and cannot recommend it to anyone anywhere at any time.