The Pornographers

Shohei Imamura's film follows Subuyan, who makes pornographic films on the quiet. He regards the work as a service, pities his customers and considers himself useful. At home he lives with the widow Haru, who believes her dead husband has returned as a carp and is sitting in judgement on her. The fish in the tank functions as a gaze from the first scene to the last. Imamura keeps placing the camera behind an obstruction: windows, glass doors, aquariums. The choice is systematic enough to be counted, and the whole idea of the film is in it. Everyone is watching everyone else, nobody looks directly, and pornography is only the most explicit form of that arrangement. The film treats postwar Japanese morality in a comic register. Imamura humiliates none of his characters and exonerates none of them either. Who it is for: viewers who like the Japanese New Wave and Imamura's portraits of the underclass. Who it is not for: anyone unwilling to enter the uncomfortable territory the film opens around sex and family.