The Big Pink From Third Window

British Blu-ray label Third Window Films has initiated a new series of "pink" double features to bring some of the more interesting examples of Japanese erotic cinema to a broader audience in the west. For those in need of further background, "pink" films were introduced in Japan in the mid 1950s and were so called because they aspired to compete with Scandanavian cinema of the time by featuring incidental nudity. They didn't really flourish until the early 1960s, when they became rougher as well as a Trojan Horse of sorts for exposing radical stylistics and political content to their unsuspecting public.

Third Window's PINK FILMS VOL. 1 + 2 (Region Free) provides inescapable evidence that the "pink" movement was not just about arousing its audience but also challenging them, not only in terms of what it was possible to depict onscreen but also in terms of genre-hopping, wild (even mad) filmic experimentation, and conveying bold political messages. Included in this first set are Atsushi Yamatoya's memorably titled INFLATABLE SEX DOLL OF THE WASTELANDS (Kôya no Dacchi waifu, 1967; listed on the IMDb as DUTCH WIFE IN THE DESERT) and Masao Adachi's GUSHING PRAYER (Funshutsu kigan - 15-sai no baishunfu, 1971 - to which the IMDb adds the subtitle "A 15-YEAR-OLD PROSTITUTE"). Approached simply as films, without predominantly carnal expectations, both films show a noticeable affiliation with the French nouvelle vague, where nudity was also intermittently found; while they both have their moments, they are not sexually arousing so much as wildly inventive and intellectually invigorating.

Yuichi Minato is weaned away from his gun by the amorous Noriko Tatsumi.

Yamatoya's INFLATABLE SEX DOLL OF THE WASTELANDS would make an interesting companion piece to Riccardo Freda's DOUBLE FACE. It's essentially film noir, filmed in B&W scope, and tells the story of Sho (Yuichi Minato), a private detective and expert marksman, who is hired by businessman Naka (Masayoshi Nogami) to rescue his kidnapped fiancée Mina (Miki Watari) from her abductor, gangster Ko - also known as "The Flying Dagger" (Shohei Yamamoto). Ko has been periodically torturing Naka and Mina's aging, gibbering father by sending them 16mm films that show her being manhandled and raped by hooded men. The father has been driven so far around the bend by filial remorse and inadvertent lust that he's become neurotically attached to (not-so-inflatable) department store mannequin he uses as an adult pacifier, or sex doll. Sho's path to Mina - which comes with a next-day deadline of 3:00pm - is barred with danger, obstructed by the seductive ploys of Ko's moll Sae (Noriko Tatsumi), and fraught with increasing delirium leading to erotic fantasies concerning his bond with his possibly-dead quarry.

Director Yamatoya is best-remembered as the screenwriter of Seijun Suzuki's gangster masterpiece BRANDED TO KILL, and he made this film in tandem with another, the brazenly titled AMOROUS LIQUID aka LOVE'S MILKY DROPS (Tajo na nyueki, 1967). He was obviously very much under the spell of Godard's ALPHAVILLE when he made this; there are individual shots that could easily be shuffled into the earlier work without detection, and Sho is very much an Eastern Lemmy Caution, gumshoe in a cheap hat, wearing a wrinkled raincoat over a jacket and a necktie dickie. Yamamoto mixes his fictional narrative with documentary shots of his actors moving through documentary street scenes, which exert a quite different fascination of their own, and he reaches for some startling effects concerning the presentation of action and violence. At one point, a suitcase is flung so that it accidentally wings the camera, and the accident is left in; in another moment, a group of thugs bursting through our hero's barricades are shown in different feigned freeze-frame positions, incrementally advanced and adjusted as he sizes up his options for retaliation. The closer Sho comes to finding Mina, the more Yamatoya's technique adopts the technical recklessness of the home movies documenting her abuse. While I can't say the film's story is particularly memorable or even clear, it's a fascinating document and - for all its deliberate ugliness - appealing in the way it subverts its hardboiled drama into a kind of delirious poem about alienation and the need for human contact. Yosuke Yamashita's score adds a lot to the experience, heaping on some splashy, wailing, free jazz very much in the vein of John Coltrane's Quartet.

Aki Sasaki as the tragic heroine of GUSHING PRAYER.

The second feature, GUSHING PRAYER, is very much the other side of the coin. A more serious film, its protagonist Yasuko Aoyagi (Aki Sasaki) is not what we assume from the designation "15 Year Old Prostitute." First of all, she is not at all your typical 15 year old, as the non-stop conversations between her and her three best friends Koichi (Hiroshi Saito), Yoko (Makiko Kim), and Bill (Yuji Aoki) are intellectual, philosophical, and rigorous. In fact, their discourse is so relentless and mutually bullying, especially toward Yasuko (ironically the most sexually experienced of the group) that it attains a kind of abstraction separated from anything warm-blooded. They are also anti-sex, despite a shared sexual obsession induced by their young bodies and inherent friskiness, with the four of them determined to find ways within their rebellious fellowship of "beating" sex (which they perceive as a commercialized invention of predatory adults) and finding a way back in touch with their natural feelings. Yasuko would seem to have little chance of attaining this goal as, at 15, she finds herself pregnant from a covert relationship with one of her teachers (Shiganori Noda). The sometimes conflicting dogma of her fellows, not to mention her elders, makes it difficult for her to decide what her options are for the future.

Director Masao Adachi (still active as of 2016) was one of the more dedicated writers and directors of the pink cinema movement, having written the scripts for Koji Wakamatsu's reasonably well exported THE EMBRYO HUNTS IN SECRET (1966), VIOLATED ANGELS (1967), and GO, GO, SECOND TIME VIRGIN (1969), sometimes working under the alias "Izuru Deguchi." What he achieves with GUSHING PRAYER is anything but erotic; there is nudity and a few instances of animal rutting between people but we are only made to feel distanced from it and somewhat repelled and confused by it and what unsated greed or curiosity drives those involved.

Like its co-feature, GUSHING PRAYER takes advantage of some documentary locations where we see its characters passing among real people, and the silent spaces between forward jumps in the narrative are filled with quotations - tragic, despairing yet still inquisitive, and sometimes poetic - from the suicide notes of various teenagers, male and female. Filmed in black-and-white scope that occasionally jolts into bold color duotones (again, showing a debt to Godard) and a couple of shifts into full, if somewhat anemic, color, this is very much related to such grim teenage tragedies as Uli Edel's CHRISTIANE F. (1981) - and if its vomiting scenes are comparatively coy, at least one other instance of graphic body horror may serve you more than you're ready to see.

Both films are newly remastered and show just enough faint surface abrasion in places to remind us that these bizarre creations were actually shown to audiences in theaters, once upon a time. There is no commentary or essay material mentioned as part of this set, which would have provided some helpful context; however, Third Window has obtained the indispensable services of BEHIND THE PINK WINDOW author Jasper Sharp for their next round, which streets next week on May 25. VOLUME 3 + 4 will feature Masayuki Suo's ABNORMAL FAMILY (1984) and Kan Asai's BLUE FILM WOMAN - which I hope to write about soon. Here's a promotional image to tide you over, as well as this helpful link to more information.

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.