No. 10 on my list of best Japanese films of 2007 is Uncle's Paradise, a modern "pink" film. As "pink film" even today serves as an incubator for quirky helmers, I think it is justified to add this film to my list, although Uncle's Paradise does not reach the same level as pink movies by directors as Meike and Zeze (see below). But what speaks for it, is that it is also totally mad and surreal...
What is it about
The location is an ordinary, quiet fishing port, a small town in "inaka," the countryside. Haruo (Yoshioka Mutsuo) dreams of catching a giant squid and can often be seen angling at the seaside, accompanied by his girlfriend Rika (Aoyama Minami). But so far he has only managed to catch ordinary squid and his refrigerator is chockfull of the slimy sea creatures.
One day, Haruo is visited by his (?) mysterious "uncle" Takeshi (Shimomoto Shiro - a "pink" veteran, who has appeared in more than 300 of these films), who comes to stay with him. Uncle has a problem - as soon as he falls asleep he sees terribly frightening dreams of vampish, dead women who want to carry him off. Afraid of falling asleep and meeting the zombies again, he is continuously drinking Orunamin C (a vitamin drink). Takeshi has brought a whole case of the well-known small bottles with him and desperately tries to stay awake.
But because he does not sleep and drinks all that exciting stuff "uncle" is also incredibly horny and seduces one after another the women of the small town, who very much welcome his amorous attentions. After the act, "uncle" writes his name on their naked bodies with a red felt pen.
Haruo's life is not without other complications, as his girlfirend is also loved by one of his colleagues, who beats Haruo up when he finds him having car sex with Rika. But as retribution, a strange fate befalls that colleague...
Then "uncle" wanders into the Other World, where the terrible women are, and Haruo and Rika follow him by checking in into what seems an ordinary love hotel...
What are "pink films"?
As most readers will know, "pink" in Japan has another connotation than from the West. It is the favorite color of "Hello Kitty" fans and young women in general, and - something very different again - in the film world refers to softcore simulated porno films. And again in contrast to the West, where softcore porno remains at a rather two-dimensional level, the Japanese pink film has since the sixties been the playground of young, new and very artistic directors. After all, as long as they made films with every ten minutes a sex scene, for a small budget and only lasting about an hour (as these films were often coupled in a double bill in the theaters), they were in principle free to do as they liked. Some directors indeed used this freedom to experiment with weird stories.
In the sixties, Takechi Tetsuji was a sort of forerunner of the genre, with films as Daydream, about erotic fantasies in the waiting room of a dentist - it became quite a scandal, but the director won the ensuing law suit.
Another (in)famous early film was The Embryo Hunts in Secret by Wakamatsu Koji , a claustrophobic story about a man who kidnaps, tortures and sexually abuses a woman in his apartment.
So in the early seventies the pink sluices were wide open, especially after Nikkatsu jumped into the fray with its endless series of "Roman(tic) Porno" films.
The most interesting directors from the Nikkatsu wave are Kumashiro Tatsumi (Ichijo Sayuri: Wet Desire and Woman with Red Hair) and Tanaka Noboru with the Abe Sada Story. Ichijo Sayuri tells a tale of backstage rivalry among strippers in downtown Osaka - a lively and energetic film where the women are stronger than the men as so often in Japanese "pink" films. Woman with Red Hair is about a construction worker who has an obsessive (and again claustrophobic) sexual relationship with a woman he picks up and takes back to his small room. Abe Sada tells the same bizarre but true story as Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses.
The actresses who were called the "queens" of Roman Porno include the curvy Miyashita Junko and Tani Naomi.
The popular SM novels of Dan Oniroku led to notorious films as Flower and Snake by Konuma Masaru. It is the story of a company president who orders his staff member Yoshi to train his wife (played by Tani Naomi) to become sexually submissive - this is done by tying her up in classical "kinbaku" style. (Recently this film was remade by Ishii Takashi, with Sugimoto Aya in the main role.)
Besides the garish novels of Dan Oniroku, also the work of literary author Tanizaki Junichiro has given rise to a whole swelling tide of films, inspired by The Tattooer, The Key and Manji. A Tanizaki work also formed the inspiration for the above-mentioned Daydreams.
In the eighties, pink films became more and more grotesque and few artistry was left. The boom petered out after the VCR conquered the living room, but a small number of young directors kept being attracted to the genre - now often going direct to video. A present-day director who has made pink films to great acclaim is Zeze Takahisa, with Raigyo, Tokyo X Erotica and A Gap in the Skin. With often serious subjects, in fact, Zeze far transcends the genre. Raigyo, for example, is an utterly bleak film about a young woman who escapes from hospital and via a telephone-club sex service meets a stranger, an encounter that ends with a cruel murder in the shower of a love hotel.
The director of Uncle's Paradise is one of the scions of the youngest generation: Imaoka Shinji. Imaoka has been active in the pink film world since the latter half of the nineties, with zany works as Despite All That and Frog Song - that last one about friendship between two women who both are interested in manga comics and large, plush dolls of frogs...
Another young director is Meike Mitsuru and he has raked in succes with The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai (2003), one of the best pink films ever made. It tells the story of a callgirl who is shot in the head and thanks to the bullet lodged in her brain turns into an intellectual superwoman. Viewers also encounter North-Korean agents, a rather stimulated professor and the cloned finger of George W. Bush that controls the atomic button...The film made quite an impression internationally and received more critical praise than normal for pink films.
But Uncle's Paradise is not bad either...
Links
Article about the Japanese Pink Film.
Wakamatsu Koji interview on Midnight Eye.
PDF file about the films of Kumashiro Tatsumi.
Article about Kumashiro Tatsumi.
Biography of Kumashiro Tatsumi.
Biography of Tanaka Noboru.
Interview with Zeze Takahisa on Midnight Eye.
The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai website.
Review of The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai by Mark Schilling and review of the same film on Midnight Eye.
Have you seen Uncle's Paradise? What did you think about it?
