This tale of Kichi-San and Sada's obsessive love is based on a true story that shocked Japan in the 1930s.

In The Realm of the Senses is directed with extraordinary craft and artful technique by director Nagisa Oshima, whose earlier, more overtly political films ushered in a New Wave in Japan akin to that in France. Indeed, it was the French who financed this film, due to the squeamishness of Japanese financiers and studios. Though Realm (for short) focuses on a narrative of an increasingly sado-masochistic, intensifying love affair, there is something political in the characters' exploits, and in the filmmaker's mind. From the point of view of Kichi and Sada, their near-solopsistic absorption in one another's bodies could stand for a protest (reducible to the slogan "make love not war"), though their obsessive love knows no limits and seems inspired by mutual need. From a point of view just outside their's (i.e. the director's), there is a pivotal moment, easily overlooked, when the forlorn Kichi (whose Sada is temporarily away with a former customer from her prostitute days) is walking along a street, head down. The camera looks down on him from far above as a stream of soldiers in formation march by him in the opposite direction. There is a conscious effort here to offset scenes of the lovers' sex (which constitute a good part of the film), with the external, political world unfolding inexorably around them. Kichi does not even look up at the soldiers' parade.

Some viewers call this movie pornography or "art porn", or attempt to distinguish from what is art and what is not in the portrayals of the lovers' actions. To do so is ridiculous and demonstrates a failure to understand this movie, as well as a misconception of the meaning of pornography, and an inability to view explicit sexual depictions without labeling them "pornographic." Let's make this clear: In The Realm of the Senses is ABOUT obsessive sex, it shows this explicitly, but it does not do so for exploitative gratification. On the contrary, the acting and script are thoroughly compelling and the direction and editing incredibly subtle and ingenious. Minoru Miki's elegiac score is used minimally and effectively throughout, with the main theme leaked suggestively in earlier scenes as a presaging of the full blown, passionate encounters that characterize the last third of the film. The characters are given depth and ambiguity, all of which give the final product a mark of intelligence and verisimilitude. The notion of pornography has zero to do with this film.

Among many things, the film is a study in obsession, and goes further in its conclusions than most films dare to, whatever the subject. There is a sense that, for the lovers, living for each others' pleasure is all that counts, and that this goal should exclude all else and proceed to its logical conclusion. The relationship between sexual possessiveness and death is convincingly fleshed out (so to speak).

Is this movie simultaneously a turn-on? Yes, to an extent. Yet, the scenes are conveyed with such pathos and a lurking sense of doom, that we cannot watch merely as impassive, prurient voyeurs. The story and the sensitivity of the actors combine to make the sex portrayed in the film as something more like a harrowing escape, and in Sada's case a cry for acceptance, while in Kichi's, a morbid abnegation of all responsibility and societal respectability. For both, this is a love unto death.



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age