Popular reviews

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  Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★★ 8

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  The key moment comes at about one hour and twenty minutes into the film, where Kichi (for the first time in the film, I think?) walks outside by himself, and we see marching soldiers and children waving Japanese nationalist flags. Kichi looks downward - maybe in shame, maybe in protest, maybe both. But this moment recontextualizes everything that has come before and contextualizes everything that will come: this hidden world that Sada and Kichi create - the 'realm of the senses' so to speak, is one made not as an extension of culture, but as a kind of suspension from it. Not just sex, but love becomes a reaction against the world.

  To be offended by this film, one really…

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  Review by josh lewis ★★★★ 6

  i am a fan of the ~sex~

  that weird thing people do that i have also done

  would recommend

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★★ 5

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  The first time you watch Ōshima Nagisa’s “In the Realm of the Senses,” it might seem like more of a horror movie than a love story. Even now, when American viewers coming to the film for the first time might be inclined to sympathize with a story about two people who self-quarantine to save themselves from their country’s suicidal ideology, it can be easy to miss the forest for the trees and mistake Ōshima’s transgressive 1976 masterpiece for something tawdry or even sinister.

  This is, after all, a claustrophobic (and broadly true) saga of erotic obsession from the most hostile of Japanese auteurs; a mad and scandalous work of art that’s full of unsimulated sex, peppered with a massacre’s worth…

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  Review by #1 gizmo fan ★★★★ 1

  that sure was... sex

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  Review by Edgar Cochran ★★★★★ 15

  Ahhh, yes... the beauty of sexual intimacy, the great variety of sensations felt during the most beautiful act of love, the very emotions of the human being reaching an extreme point of pleasure. Ai no Corrida is the most cinematically graphic representation of a fully-developed study on human eroticism, but what is often confused with either a strictly pornographic film or with a fully perverted movie is actually an essay of political ideas depicted with extreme liberalism. Audacious and poetical Japanese director Nagisa Ôshima directs his definitive masterpiece, a controversial work of art of impeccably explicit proportions that awakens the very human reactions of denial when sexual content is mercilessly displayed on the screen, a reaction that, ironically, people do…

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  Review by stevie ★★★★ 3

  I'm 18 and I'm far too young to be watching this.

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  Review by Liz ★★★★★ 2

  Love all of the straight cinebros on here calling this 'tatty old porn masquerading as arthouse.' What kind of porn are y'all watching?

  Even if this was pornographic (it's not), does that make it a bad thing? Should a story that's about sexual obsession just have the camera pan over to a window or fade to black?

  Not sure how, but I forgot just how (intentionally!) funny this is. Matsuda and Fuji give the performances of a lifetime. Really stunning.

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  Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★½ 4

  The film is about Obsession not sex! Unsimulated sex is rampant, but after awhile it loses it's allure and even the voyeurs among us wish they'd take a break! That is the point when we begin seeing it for what it truly is... an obsession!

  Based on a true story about an incident that took place in 1936 Japan! The funny thing about this is Japan doesn't censor gory, bloody, graphic violence and serves it up on a silver platter on a regular basis but god forbid if a film depicts unsimulated sex or a male penis that's instant ban material! Thankfully Oshima found a French partner otherwise this film would never have seen the light of day!

  So I applaud the film for simply existing!

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  Review by Jerry McGlothlin ★★★★½ 17

  Can I offer you a nice egg in this tryin’ time? 🥚

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  Review by Deckk ★★★★★ 5

  Based on a true story, In the Realm of the Senses — set in 1936 Tokyo — depicts the intense sexual obsession between Kichizo and Sada; the former a hotel owner, the latter one of the hotel's maids.

  In the Realm of the Senses is a psychosexual experience that borders on pornography (lots of the very explicit sex scenes are unsimulated), but if I were to call it a porno, I'd have to add to that that it's by far the most beautifully shot, most beautifully sounding, and most beautifully written porno of all time. This has little to do with love, and everything to do with desire, passion, lust, ecstasy: the realm of the senses. Immediate basic needs like sleep and…

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  Review by Jaime Rebanal ★★★★★

  When a film depicts sex for the mere sake of it, that's where I believe it can be deemed pornography. In the case of In the Realm of the Senses, as explicit as the sex may be, I don't at all see it as pornography - it nearly borders on that but to me, it wouldn't seem fair especially when what we have is a story being told, one especially that shocked Japan during its time. But out of everyone they got to direct it, it was a man who wanted to push beyond the limits, none other than Nagisa Oshima. It's interesting how others can read into this, but I find it extremely masterful and at that, it is…

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  Review by spap1 ★★★★½ 4

  how do you even start writing about a film like this? i feel lost for words yet i have so much to say. it was definitely one of the most profound studies of a film i’ve ever seen, and i doubt i’ll ever see anything like this again. it just had this power to transport you in that very moment. 

  it was really brilliant. 

  ….

  the film itself has, in Oshima’s own words, sex as a plot line, with the themes of the film being much deeper and rooted within the story through symbolic means - in that sense it feels rather like a surrealist film. i’m not going to talk about all the symbolism here but i’ll quickly touch…