Is there a more notorious sex scene in cinema history? If there is, Bernardo Bertolucci’s infamous “ Last Tango In Paris” at least held the record for the better part of two decades unchallenged. And while it’s impossible not to giggle and act like a four year old when discussing or writing about it, it’s actually quite terrific once you get past how strange, obsessive, and even maniacal the jackrabbit-like sex can be. But while it’s amusing to poke fun at the movie as pornography-made-as-art (which in many ways it is), Oshima’s filmmaking mastery is fully on display too. Not a film to see with your parents, or on a first date, or a second, third or 50th date, “In the Realm of the Senses” is admittedly pretty twisted and not for the faint of heart. Though, to be fair, she was feeding him mushrooms that were, shall we say, “lady flavored” just moments before. Perhaps the strangest element of the various mutually obsessive experimenting-with-sex acts in the film-including lots of erotic asphyxiation-is the part when the male lead played by Tatsuya Fuji places a hardboiled egg into the vagina of his partner (played by Eiko Matsuda). And yes, it’s all “real,” which also makes it often uncomfortable, funny, and yes, sometimes erotic. A sensual and very primal look at carnal desire, “In the Realm of the Senses” is pretty much constant sex, penetration, bj’s, you name it (and it’s also an examination of when love and sexual possession curdles into something rather psychotic). A fictionalized account of a real event-a 1930s brothel servant’s affair with the madam’s husband which leads to hubby’s penis being severed with a knife-that’s actually not so much the most disturbing part (though yes, this pre-Lorena Bobbit stuff is fucked up). Especially next to Japanese enfant terrible Nagisa Oshima’s 1976 erotic sex drama (read arty pornography) “ In the Realm of the Senses” (though its direct, more appropriate translation is “ Bullfight of Love,” American distributors apparently feeling it necessary to make it sound a bit more sensual). What’s that? Lars von Trier is making a soft-core pornography drama where the lead actors will have unsimulated sex-though of course any real penetration or sex will be performed by body doubling porn actors? That’s cute.
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