Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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76 of 78 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masterwork in sexuality, 22 Nov 2003
Yes, this is explicit, but if you're simply after pornography, you can get more bangs for your buck elsewhere: this isn't a slideshow of silicon-enhanced babes and improbably-endowed studs. It's an exploration of sexual passion; the thrill, the joy, the overwhelming power. With pornography you're watching geysers spurt. With this film, you're swimming in the sea, happily splashing about in the waves - then before you know it, you're looking at a tsunami hurtling towards you...By the end you amy well be torn between wanting the type of relationship portrayed and never wanting sex again! The film takes us to that deep and scarey place inside ourselves that few acknowledge and even fewer ever visit.
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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
NOT SIMPLY LEGAL PORN!!!!!, 22 Mar 2007
A very important piece of information that also needs to be added to these reviews, is that this story is completely true.
It happened in 1936, at a time when such actions becoming public would normally shock any society. Abe however was treated with mercy (given her fragile mental state), and after the initial shock died down, she became quite a female hero in her country.
I'm frankly appalled by some reviews I've read in other places that compare this to legal porn and nothing more, as they are totally missing the point of it!
Even if you had never seen any other film in your life, you could see the technical and emotional effort that goes into making a film like this compared to "cheap porn".
In fact, the two lead actors were quite negatively affected emotionally and physically, (yes, they really did begin to waste away like that, they were mentally damaged by the experience, which proves the devotion they had to portraying their characters well).
You cannot tell a true story without showing events that really happened, so the sex scenes you see, (which were not faked by the way...well, apart from the asphyxiation obviously) were necessary to show the depth of the obsession that had formed between the couple. Unlike films like 9 Songs, which include such things, and then shout about the "realness" of the pointless sex scenes, just to get attention for their otherwise cowardly, artless film.
Ai No Corrida (In The Realm Of The Senses...how it's known in Japan, and how you may find it written on the DVD case) is beautifully shot, the music is perfect and unobtrusive, the actors genuinely brave and the fact that the story is true makes the things you see even more touching.
Forget the typically Western reactions you will have read in newspapers and magazines when this was at last released after 32 years in 2001, and open your mind to a touching true story.
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32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The essence of sexual obsessiveness, 21 April 2002
By A Customer
A remarkable story, told at a gentle pace, building through the layers of sexual obsession as the two principal characters, Kichi-zo and his lover, Sada, become embroiled in an erotic search for release from the everyday oppression of 1930's Japanese society. As the story approaches its violent and deeply sad conclusion (based on an actual murder case) they find themselves increasingly isolated from the expectations of family, lovers and peers and they both come to realise that emotional satisfaction and sexual fulfilment do not go hand in glove. The story is laced with comedy - the treatment of the attendant geisha for example and does well to create the feeling of life in a ryokan or Japanese Inn. The film gained notoriety for the explicitness of the in-your-face sex and serves perhaps as a object lesson in the differences between pornography and film-art.
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