In the Realm of the Senses

Japan, 1936. Sada, a former prostitute working as a maid in a restaurant, begins an affair with Kichizo, who owns it. The two cut themselves off from the world into a single room, and past a certain point the relationship becomes a contest measured against death. The film is drawn from a real case reported in the Japanese press in 1936, that of Sada Abe. Nagisa Ōshima directed. The film exists because of a legal gap. It was set up as a French and Japanese co-production with the producer Anatole Dauman immediately after pornography restrictions were lifted in France in 1975. That let Ōshima go entirely around Japanese censorship: once shot, the negative was sent to France to be processed and cut, because no Japanese laboratory could handle the material. It became the first film by a major Japanese director that could not be printed in its own country. The consequence is that international prints are uncut while the versions shown in Japan are blurred and cropped. The film has still never been shown there whole. Ōshima was also prosecuted for obscenity for publishing the screenplay as a book; the case ran four years and ended in acquittal. Who it is for: anyone interested in where censorship and form have been pushed in film history. Who it is not for: almost everybody. The sex is real rather than simulated, the film does not hide it, and the final scene is deliberately unbearable.