Sing a Song of Sex

Nagisa Oshima's 1967 film follows four high school students preparing for university entrance exams. An encounter with a drunken teacher, and the bawdy folk songs they hear from him, pulls them away from study and off in another direction. The songs of the title are not a pretext; Oshima uses these traditional songs as a door into Japan's suppressed history. Sexuality, class and discrimination against workers of Korean origin all surface through them at once. The film also speaks directly to the student movement of the sixties. The narrative does not run straight. What the boys imagine and what actually happens are shown without separation, and the line between a fantasy of killing and a real death is deliberately erased. That method makes the film uncomfortable, which is Oshima's intent. Who it's for: those curious about the Japanese New Wave and politically provocative cinema. Who it's not for: viewers troubled by fantasies of sexual violence being worked through in a narrative; the film puts this at its centre and offers no commentary.