Thanatos, Eros and the Art of Zen - Japanese Erotic Cinema Project - #1

I went to see this film at the cinema on my own. Nobody else could go but I wanted to anyway because I am precipitously dementing into a Sion Sono fan. And it has the word porno in the title, so there is that.

There was a lesbian couple sitting next to me. It doesnt matter that they were lesbians. But with the same sex marriage bills going through the Australian parliament at the moment it is a pretty exciting time and so I kept thinking, "wow, this couple could legally get married soon". And I am a fan of love, whatever the configuration of plugs…

"I'm a virgin. A virgin but a whore."

I guess that the day they gave the greenlight to this film went like this:

Place: Nikkatsu's Production Studio

Nikkatsu Executive #1
Good morning Mr. Sono! How are you today?

*Sono enters the meeting and sits. Then he lights up a cigarette*

Sion Sono
Not bad.

Nikkatsu Executive #2
The reason why we have summoned you here today is because we want to produce your next feature film.

*Sono takes a long drag, listening with interest*

Nikkatsu Executive #3
Are you ready to begin filming as soon as possible? We are aware that last year you made five films, so we understand if you are tired and want to take a little…

Yes, I spent my Boxing Day watching this. No, I don't think I have anything to apologise for.

The first wave of Nikkatsu's Roman Porno Rebooted has felt a bit like a rebuttal of Manny Farber's thesis about "termite art" being superior to "white elephant art". It's all very well colouring within the lines of your given genre, but what happens when the genre doesn't have a clearly-defined reason to exist any more? I haven't seen Hideo Nakata's White Lily, but by all accounts it's a well-shot softcore film from a director who - for better or worse - has never taken an ironic or revisionist attitude towards the genres he works in. Sion Sono's Antiporno, on the other hand,…

Feels weird to give such an outrageous and depraved film five stars but then again, that’s sort of exactly why I’m doing so. Antiporno is the perfect example of the stars aligning for a filmmaker, with everything they have done or have tried to do, accumulating successfully and creating the kind of perfection unique to the rules of their own aesthetics and ideas. At only an hour and fifteen minutes, this punchy powerful film takes the audience hostage and pummels them with a nonstop show of vibrant colours, constant style changes, explicit imagery, overblown satire, wonderful performances and a headfuck of a narrative. Sono’s views on censorship and sexual repression are very clear and as admirable as much as they…

This is definitely a "postmodern" film. Completely deconstructs reality in a surrealist manner that would make one of my favorite "surrealist" directors proud — Luis Bunuel.

Film is a mix of the following films (or the films that I thought this film was similar to):
- "Sex is Comedy" (2002, Catherine Breillat)
This was because the element of telling a story within a story was sort of the case in "Antiporno". "Sex is Comedy" is a film about making a film; it gets at insights that are derived from "performing" with others watching; that is, that the "performance" isn't necessarily real (an actors puts on a fake act afterall) but it can be real as it derives from some personal…

When I was not even the midpoint of Antiporuno I got a conplete sense of being in room where I don't belong, a child lost on one of the aisles at a random supermarket. Basically I was lost and wanted to take break, research the shit otta of it and check on either I was watching a cinematic universe where I'm completely unaware than Sono was part of or simply... I'm watching a project where a bunch of directors are recreating a certain genre of film in Japan annnd *dink* *dink* Oh! So this was that Roman Porno project that I heard of a while back. But basically I didn't stop, I continued the film and everything made sense after…