Nikkatsu adult throwback screens at New York Asian Film Festival
Part of Nikkatsu’s “Roman Porno Redux” series, Aroused by Gymnopedies, which screened at the NYAFF has the Iconic studio revisiting their soft-core roots for a new generation of thought provoking adult cinema. From director Isao Yukisada (Crying Out Love in the Center of the World), Aroused by Gymnopedies is an oddly compelling story that uses its gratuitous sex to illustrate one man’s struggle with his demons.
The film presents six days in the life of washed up film director Shinji Furuya (Itsuji Itao). Once internationally renown, the director now teaches university and has been relegated to making skin flicks to pay to keep his comatose wife on life support. When the lead actress on his latest troubled production quits, we follow the director’s downward spiral though a series of romantic trysts that delve into one man’s damaged psyche. It’s a non-traditional path of self-destruction that has Shinji robbing his students and guilting a former lover into prostitution to loan him money. This culminates in one of the most audacious third acts in recent memory as Shinji attempts to shock his wife out of a coma by having sex with her nurse at the foot of her bed.
Strangely meta and sometimes dreamlike, the film has the Shinji using his skill behind the camera to manipulate the women in his life. Dark, thought provoking and sometimes humorous the story has a real emotional edge that elevates the film well above its titillating genre. While the film does follow the Roman Porno structure it uses it to perfectly show one troubled man’s descent in the bowels of his own lechery. Itsuji Itao does an amazingly nuanced job with creating a character that is equally repugnant, but that you actually begin to pity over the course of the film. It’s not an easy role but Itsuji’s performance is what carries the strange narrative and keeps the film from devolving into a parody of itself.
While there is plenty of skin, there is definitely much more at work here as director Isao Yukisada has turned in a deconstruction of a man who is just trying to numb the pain while also keeping his true love alive. Much like director Furuya in the film, director Isao Yukisada has turned in a film that is very “high minded” given the trappings of the genre. While some may not be able to get past the film’s sex scenes that definitely are more arthouse than exploitation, those that can look beyond the surface will be pleasantly surprised with a very engrossing romantic drama.