While many may still look down upon a genre such as pink film, many entries in Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno Reboot Project are not only entertaining to watch, they have also garnered quite a lot of critical acclaim. The guidelines of having, more or less, complete artistic freedom and the obligation to add a few nude scenes in the story has worked for titles like Sion Sono’s “Antiporno”, a movie which not only works as a titillating feature, but also as an in-depth look about gender images in film as well as class. In 2016, Akihiko Shiota, a director who has had experience working in the field of pink film, managed to convince both audience and critics with his entry into the project called “Wet Woman in the Wind”, a story about temptation and pretense.
Popularity comes with a price for Kosuke (Tasuku Nagaoka), a famous playwright,...
Popularity comes with a price for Kosuke (Tasuku Nagaoka), a famous playwright,...
- 10/23/2020
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Akihiko Shiota's Wet Woman in the Wind (2016), which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from November 24 - December 24, 2017 as a Special Discovery.Much like Hollywood, the Japanese film industry goes to the well as often as possible once it hits a lucky strike. Such was the case with the so-called Roman Porno films of the 1970s, an infamous genre of sexploitation primarily identified with Japan’s oldest major studio, Nikkatsu. Financial trouble necessitated a popular, inexpensive product, and these softcore numbers were just the ticket. This may have been the studio where Kenji Mizoguchi and Shohei Imamura made films early in their careers, but by 1971 the Roman Porno factory was in full swing, producing quick, cheap, titillating product for an audience hungry for female toplessness and a great deal of convulsive thrusting.
- 11/23/2017
- MUBI
If you read Playboy for the articles, “Wet Woman in the Wind” and “Antiporno” may be for you. Part of Mubi’s foray into theatrical distribution, they also represent the return of the Roman Porno — a particular kind of pink film (read: softcore porn) made by the Nikkatsu studio and prevalent in Japan throughout the 1970s and ‘80s.
The first of these, 1971’s “Apartment Wife: Affair in the Afternoon,” spawned 20 sequels within a seven-year span and made Kuzuko Shirakawa a different kind of scream queen long before Jamie Lee Curtis first met Michael Myers. Nikkatsu produced roughly three Roman Pornos a month until 1988, helping the revered studio pivot away from Yakuza flicks. These affairs were short, sexy, and often quite good — critics responded to them with nearly as much enthusiasm as audiences.
Read More:‘Anti-Porno’ Trailer: Japanese Director Sion Sono Returns with a Feminist Take on Sexuality
To celebrate that legacy,...
The first of these, 1971’s “Apartment Wife: Affair in the Afternoon,” spawned 20 sequels within a seven-year span and made Kuzuko Shirakawa a different kind of scream queen long before Jamie Lee Curtis first met Michael Myers. Nikkatsu produced roughly three Roman Pornos a month until 1988, helping the revered studio pivot away from Yakuza flicks. These affairs were short, sexy, and often quite good — critics responded to them with nearly as much enthusiasm as audiences.
Read More:‘Anti-Porno’ Trailer: Japanese Director Sion Sono Returns with a Feminist Take on Sexuality
To celebrate that legacy,...
- 11/21/2017
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
The distribution landscape continues to evolve, with a healthy mixture of new players and stalwarts, and yet every year there are great movies that slip through the cracks. For the most part, movies that gain serious traction on the festival circuit find their way to various American buyers and usually wind up with some kind of home.
While ambitious newcomers like A24 and Amazon Studios continue to up their game while veterans such as Sony Pictures Classics keep rolling along, even they have limits to the kind of content they can gamble on.
Read More: The 25 Best Movie Moments of 2016, According to IndieWire Critic David Ehrlich
Usually, the movies that struggle to find homes aren’t ignored so much as they’re deemed non-commercial or risky. Distributors often shy away from the prospects of a “difficult” movie simply because they can’t imagine a trailer for it, or because it...
While ambitious newcomers like A24 and Amazon Studios continue to up their game while veterans such as Sony Pictures Classics keep rolling along, even they have limits to the kind of content they can gamble on.
Read More: The 25 Best Movie Moments of 2016, According to IndieWire Critic David Ehrlich
Usually, the movies that struggle to find homes aren’t ignored so much as they’re deemed non-commercial or risky. Distributors often shy away from the prospects of a “difficult” movie simply because they can’t imagine a trailer for it, or because it...
- 12/7/2016
- by David Ehrlich and Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Exclusive: Akihiko Shiota’s latest has gone to South Korea and Taiwan.
Nikkatsu Corporation has sold Akihiko Shiota’s latest film Wet Woman In The Wind, which is set to receive its world premiere in Locarno’s International Competition today Friday (August 5), to South Korea (Orange Yellow Heim) and Taiwan (Movie Cloud).
This is the first Roman Porno film from Nikkatsu in the festival’s main competition since the Japanese company started the softcore porn label in 1971. It also marks the return of Japanese director Shiota to Locarno after his first feature Moonlight Whispers (not a Nikkatsu Roman Porno) was competing for the Golden Leopard in 1999.
The new picture is about a former playwright from the city who seeks to lead a quiet life in the mountain but is caught up in a spiral of desire with a promiscuous young woman. The main cast includes Yuki Mamiya and Tasuku Nagaoka.
Wet [link=tt...
Nikkatsu Corporation has sold Akihiko Shiota’s latest film Wet Woman In The Wind, which is set to receive its world premiere in Locarno’s International Competition today Friday (August 5), to South Korea (Orange Yellow Heim) and Taiwan (Movie Cloud).
This is the first Roman Porno film from Nikkatsu in the festival’s main competition since the Japanese company started the softcore porn label in 1971. It also marks the return of Japanese director Shiota to Locarno after his first feature Moonlight Whispers (not a Nikkatsu Roman Porno) was competing for the Golden Leopard in 1999.
The new picture is about a former playwright from the city who seeks to lead a quiet life in the mountain but is caught up in a spiral of desire with a promiscuous young woman. The main cast includes Yuki Mamiya and Tasuku Nagaoka.
Wet [link=tt...
- 8/5/2016
- ScreenDaily
[This review initially appeared when the film screened at Germany's Nippon Connection and with the film appearing this weekend at the Shinsedai Festival in Toronto we present it again now..]
If there is one "buzz" film at this year's Nippon Connection it would have to be Momoko Ando's same sex romance "Kakera: A Piece of Your Life". The debut film by the daughter of actor/ director Eiji Okuda (Shoujyo, ) and TV personality and essayist Kazu Ando got its international premiere at last year's Raindance Film Festival in London in September, was quickly snatched up by UK distributor Third Window Films shortly after, and by the end of the year it was being included on a number of Top Ten Best of 2009 critics lists. When any film is so quickly showered with ovations I always get a little suspicious, and going into a film festival I always prioritize my "must-see" list not by buzz, but by films that I may never get a chance to see again, so with that in mind "Kakera" was somewhere on my "maybe" list -...
If there is one "buzz" film at this year's Nippon Connection it would have to be Momoko Ando's same sex romance "Kakera: A Piece of Your Life". The debut film by the daughter of actor/ director Eiji Okuda (Shoujyo, ) and TV personality and essayist Kazu Ando got its international premiere at last year's Raindance Film Festival in London in September, was quickly snatched up by UK distributor Third Window Films shortly after, and by the end of the year it was being included on a number of Top Ten Best of 2009 critics lists. When any film is so quickly showered with ovations I always get a little suspicious, and going into a film festival I always prioritize my "must-see" list not by buzz, but by films that I may never get a chance to see again, so with that in mind "Kakera" was somewhere on my "maybe" list -...
- 7/21/2010
- Screen Anarchy
[Our thanks to Chris Bourne for the following review.]
Yuki Tanada's 2004 erotic comedy/drama Electric Button (Moon and Cherry) is part of this year's Japan Cuts section "Best of Unreleased Naughties." This means, of course, the best unreleased (in Us) Japanese films of the 2000s, but Electric Button is naughty in a very different way.
Tanada's film has been described as a distinctly female perspective on the Japanese genre of pinku eiga ("pink film"), which is a brand of soft-core sex film, but this isn't quite accurate. Yes, there is copious sex in the film, but it isn't as explicit or programmatic as in regular pinku eiga, the conventions of which usually demand five sex scenes per hour at roughly ten-to-fifteen minute intervals.
Electric Button is closer to another genre of Japanese sex film called roman porno, which was similar to pink film but had a more literary, artistic bent and felt less formulaic than many pink films.
Yuki Tanada's 2004 erotic comedy/drama Electric Button (Moon and Cherry) is part of this year's Japan Cuts section "Best of Unreleased Naughties." This means, of course, the best unreleased (in Us) Japanese films of the 2000s, but Electric Button is naughty in a very different way.
Tanada's film has been described as a distinctly female perspective on the Japanese genre of pinku eiga ("pink film"), which is a brand of soft-core sex film, but this isn't quite accurate. Yes, there is copious sex in the film, but it isn't as explicit or programmatic as in regular pinku eiga, the conventions of which usually demand five sex scenes per hour at roughly ten-to-fifteen minute intervals.
Electric Button is closer to another genre of Japanese sex film called roman porno, which was similar to pink film but had a more literary, artistic bent and felt less formulaic than many pink films.
- 7/6/2010
- Screen Anarchy
[Our thanks go out to Chris MaGee and Marc Saint-Cyr at the Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow for sharing their coverage of the 2010 Nippon Connection Film Festival.]
If there is one "buzz" film at this year's Nippon Connection it would have to be Momoko Ando's same sex romance "Kakera: A Piece of Your Life". The debut film by the daughter of actor/ director Eiji Okuda (Shoujyo, ) and TV personality and essayist Kazu Ando got its international premiere at last year's Raindance Film Festival in London in September, was quickly snatched up by UK distributor Third Window Films shortly after, and by the end of the year it was being included on a number of Top Ten Best of 2009 critics lists. When any film is so quickly showered with ovations I always get a little suspicious, and going into a film festival I always prioritize my "must-see" list not by buzz, but by films that I may never get a chance to see again, so with that in mind "Kakera" was somewhere on my "maybe" list -...
If there is one "buzz" film at this year's Nippon Connection it would have to be Momoko Ando's same sex romance "Kakera: A Piece of Your Life". The debut film by the daughter of actor/ director Eiji Okuda (Shoujyo, ) and TV personality and essayist Kazu Ando got its international premiere at last year's Raindance Film Festival in London in September, was quickly snatched up by UK distributor Third Window Films shortly after, and by the end of the year it was being included on a number of Top Ten Best of 2009 critics lists. When any film is so quickly showered with ovations I always get a little suspicious, and going into a film festival I always prioritize my "must-see" list not by buzz, but by films that I may never get a chance to see again, so with that in mind "Kakera" was somewhere on my "maybe" list -...
- 4/16/2010
- Screen Anarchy
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