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In the Realm of the Senses Actors: Tatsuya Fuji, Eiko Matsuda Director: Nagisa Oshima Number of Items: 1 Picture Format: Pan & Scan Format: Color Audience Rating: X (Mature Audiences Only) Running Time: 105 minutes Studio: Fox Lorber Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2002-07-23 Buy from Amazon |
 "Sorry....it just ends up missing "something" special"Capt. Freaky has seen them all folks...even some of the ones you were never supposed to see! This film reaches out and attempts to provide the viewer with some radical sex scenes...and often does...the question becomes, why are we not excited while watching them? The answer is...because the actors seem to be "acting" out their respective roles. It's as transparent as an old 1960's TV show....its as if you can just hear someone off screen teling them, "pull her hair", "now rub her crotch", "jump on top of her" etc. etc. I know all of these types of films made in the 1970's were made to titilate the audiences with odd sex...shocking perversions..and kinky overtones. And for that...this film succeeds and garners 3 stars from me. I do like to watch an egg come out of a woman's vulva however...it would have been much freakier if I believed that "she liked it" too! I don't know...if you like most Japanese kink...this film is for you! I just think they always seem to fall short in the "erotic" department...I'll stick to the kinky European stuff...they sell it to you "classier" while the Jap's sell it to you "harder"! Its as if the Asian mafia's make these women do these scenes in their movies....while the Europeans had kinky young teens lining up without their underwear on, to make the films they used to produce back in the '70s! The tradition of sex films made underground over in Europe continues to this day....now these young, horny, teenage girls in the recently freed Eastern European nations, are in to making low budget, "hard core porno" films that show very "realistic" rape scenes and other very graphic sexual depictions. What was once the capital of crude and unusual sex films, is now the captial of "real exploitation film making"....but alas...that is not a subject for the "Amazon customer" to be discussing here....This film may have gotten the ball rolling over in Japan for more XXX rated films...but it falls short in delivering the goods for Capt. Freaky.  "5 star movie. No stars for Fox Lorber."This is one of the most insulting presentations of a respected film you are likely to see. I haven't seen the dubbed(!!!) version, but the sloppy cropping really damages the film's meticulous compositions. Nor is the image any too sharp. And then there are those improperly timed subtitles. Even worse than usual for the careless trolls at Fox Lorber. And despite the presence of "hardcore" scenes, the film is cut. A brief (and not really sexual) scene involving a child has been removed. The PAL UK DVD has a much better transfer and includes this scene - but it has been optically censored. Many people won't get this film. If you're looking for porno-style thrills, prepare to be bored. That's not what it's about. This movie is not fast-moving or plot-driven. If you're looking to be aroused, this may or may not do it for you - but I don't think that's the intention either. Nor is it all that shocking, unless you've been really sheltered. This is one of the most deeply emotional motion pictures I've ever seen - but looking at some of the other reviews I can see that not everyone had the same experience. It's a lot closer to Carl Dreyer than anything else - so if you don't have the patience for 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' with it's limited settings and lingering closeups of faces, you probably shouldn't bother with this. Oshima is criminally underrepresented on video. Long before he made this movie he was one of the most important directors who ever lived. Sadly, most of his greatest contributions are virtually unknown today. In 1960 he made the very high-context 'Night and Fog in Japan,' which was an attempt to make a film that was actually a part of the political discourse of the moment, as opposed to making a film ABOUT those politics. This film similarly uses the sexual act as a means of allowing the audience to participate on a deeper level than as mere spectators. (Of course, anyone who is sitting, watching and waiting for something to happen along the lines of conventional narrative "entertainment" will probably miss the boat entirely.) While I understand that 'Night and Fog in Japan' has a really limited audience even in Japan, I can't imagine why such essential films as 'Death by Hanging' and 'Ceremonies' have fallen into almost complete obscurity. It's a sad state of affairs. "This is a WARNING:"This IS NOT a review of this film, this is a warning. NC-17 is a bold understatement. I have never seen a film with an NC-17 rating with pornographic content. When I say pornographic, I don't mean "late-night Cinemax", I mean if you were to rent this movie, it would be in the "back room" of the video store. Not for everyone. Again, the NC-17 rating means absolutely nothing.  "In the Realm of the Senses"The best movie of life in japan i`ve seen and i have several. But they don`t reach this movie. It was very daring. ( I liked the crotch shots) My other movies seem in complete. This movie made you want to live there in those times!!!!! "Eww."Some reviewers have commented that all this movie is is a bunch of sex scenes. Actually, I would love to watch a *sexy* movie with a bunch of sex scenes, but that isn't what this is. Lots of scenes are really gross, to me anyway. He puts a boiled egg inside her and she squeezes it out again, she clips off some of his, um, hair and eats it, he rapes an old lady...it's pretty grim and pointless. My husband and I saw this in a theater, and we walked out. |
