Japanese New Wave cinema was a major art movement from the 1950s to the 1970s, and it's most notable because it made embracing taboo material central to its themes. From the modern auteurs such as Sono Sion and Miike Takashi, through to the great master of the form, Fukasaku Kinji, Japanese filmmaking and transgression have been so closely linked that the people have even given the loose collection of filmmakers and their work a genre. The movie, though, is not a work of art at most, it is an artistic blunder.Japanese cinema has had a long tradition of embracing transgression. The sex is never divorced from emotion, and this, for such graphic presentation is a novelty.
Eiko Matsuda is appealing and even touching in her insatiability Tatsuya Fuji has a haunting gentleness and passivity as he comes to recognize his destiny: to be literally loved to death. The sex scenes, totally explicit, are much more than gymnastics. It takes place furtively at first, then more and more openly, alone and in company. He is a man of infinite capacity and she is a woman of infinite desire-her doctor's term is “hypersensitive,” she delicately explains-and so the sex is incessant. The film consists of virtually nothing but their love‐making. He is married to the owner of a geisha house she is a newly arrived geisha. “Senses” which, with the Customs ban reversed, has opened at the Plaza Theater, is about the literally consuming passion of a man and a woman. Except an undeniable-though I think poorly used-artistic imagination. “Senses” does not show anything that has not been available in hard‐core porn houses around Manhattan. I am using the word “intolerable” as a critic and not to justify the United States Customs ban on the film last fall. And In those last couple of minutes a trying film became an intolerable one. It had become tedious and repetitious Its limited strengths had long since been exhausted from overuse. Nagisa Oshima's film about sexual obsession, “In the Realm of the Senses,” was not, in fact, doing very well when, in the last couple of minutes, he turned the volume up. Excessive visual shock will turn an audience's attention from any other quality a movie may possess and center it exclusively on its own pain. Even with the contemporary pleasure in turnedup volume, there is a point at which music is so loud it can't be heard. It's impossible to see a painting if your nose is squashed right up against the canvas. The film opened yesterday at the Plaza Theater. The following is adapted from Richard Eder's review, which appeared Oct. “In the Realm of the Senses” ('L'Empire Des Sens') was shown at the 1976 New York Film Festival.
At the Plaza Theater, 58th Street east at Madison Avenue. Produced by Anaiole Dauman production companies Arges Films (Parix/Oshima Productions), Tokyo. Keiidll Uraoke musk, Minoru M?kl and traditional Japanese songs: by Nagisa Oshim screenplay (Japanese with English subtitles) by Naqisa Ostoma photography, Kenlchi Okamoto and Hideo Ito editor. IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (L'EMPINE DES SENS), directed.