Who knew sex could be so boring? This is a pointedly polemic film, and it still comes off as quite edgy 35 years after it came out, which is _something_ I guess. It's remarkably unenjoyable, though. Like, I'm not sure I've ever watched a less enjoyable film. Parts of it are kind of nice looking, but that's about the only thing the film does to make the audience like it. The sex scenes get increasingly abrasive and tedious, and the flat characters can, in my opinion, go fuck themselves.

"To paraphrase a crack from Pauline Kael: light the incense, perverts." - Eric Henderson

what the fuck is this shit

Honestly, I don't even know what to say about this film. It's based on the true story of a nymphomaniac named Sada Abe. You can research her, but only if you don't mind spoiling this movie. This movie really doesn't hold back. I'm not kidding. It has unsimulated sex and was originally released in France in order to dodge Japan's censorship. This movie really has balls...aww man, why'd I say that...maybe I should rephrase that...

If the goal of a porn is to elicit an erotic response, then this either isn't what gets me horny, or isn't a porn. Besides the shockingly lucid poetic realism of the cinematography and editing, I was surprised by the subtle but gorgeous use of music to give the proceedings more depth. The tone of the film, after the nudity and constant sex sinks in, has an eerie quality that made some of the content (pulling on the child's penis) the equivalent of horror. I appreciate it, but won't see it twice.

great date film

Pointless... When you cut the sex scenes, you have nothing left in your hand!;

#262

what the hell is this

I went in expecting something insubstantial, but this is not porn, it's art (or at least, artful porn). Erotic and psychological tension is a constant, and as it continues, these points grow more and more connected.

Explicit, but not particularly erotic.

At some point the girl shoves a hard boiled egg up her snatch. Afterwards she 'poops' it out like a chicken. Then the girl and her lover eat the egg. You decide if you still want to watch it.

257

Is it art, or is it porn? Well, I say it's both, and it's not good at either one. This story could have been told with a LOT less sex, and without the graphic detail.

Oshima takes on a contraversial subject matter that is hard to swallow and open to exploitation. The movie is quite graphic and most will slap it towards porn. But the tension between the couple is far more intense inside that made me clench my teeth most of the time. Extremely hard to swallow, view with discretion.

A thin line from pornography - only for those interested how far one can get.

# 272

The film seems too content in shocking the audience with explicit sex and doesn't really present a story that's all that compelling. Some of the images are undeniably striking, though.

Japanese cinema was easier and quicker to liberalize than others, because their culture never had the same conservative antibodies as cultures of Abrahamic religiosity. After Japan's Pink Film trend of the 1960s in particular, Nagisa Oshima's small step further into fetish-porn art cinema should not have caused the scandal/international sensation that it did. Especially being that as porn it's not very arousing, and as a feature film it's only sporadically interesting.

This flick is packed with explicit sex scenes between the two main actors: penetration, blowjobs, money shots, the whole deal. This was a serious film with real actors and such, but it is pretty boring. The sex scenes aren't titillating enough to serve as porn or exploitation (though the fetish crowd might dig some of the choking with silk scarves stuff), and the rest of the story isn't interesting enough to make it worthwhile.

269

It receives unfortunate stigma because of it's explicit nature, but it skillfully tells of sex and it's relation to domination, political movements and society. It's incredibly easy to view this as just a "bad porno" but if you can believe that a porno would be shot and conceived in the same way as Ai no Corrida, than I'd have to say you're looking in the wrong direction.