Futei no kisetsu   2000   Japan I Am an S+M Writer
I Am an S+M Writer Image Cover
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Director:Ryuichi Hiroki
Studio:Bonobo Co.
Writer:Oniroku Dan, Hitoshi Ishikawa
IMDb Rating:6.0 (139 votes)
Awards:1 win
Genre:Comedy, Drama
Duration:88 min
Ryuichi Hiroki  ...  (Director)
Oniroku Dan, Hitoshi Ishikawa  ...  (Writer)
Ren Osugi  ...  Kurosaki
Yôko Hoshi  ...  Shizuko
Jun Murakami  ...  Kawada
Eri Yamazaki  ...  Kyoko
Kiriko Shimizu  ...  Tome
William Brian Churchill  ...  
Ren Ohsugi  ...  Kurosaki
Kazuhiro Suzuki  ...  Cinematographer
Kôji Endô  ...  Composer
Comments: Ryuichi Hiroki released this film and Tokyo Trash Baby on the same weekend!

Kurosaki (Ren Osugi) is an erotic novelist who uses his editor and a hired model to act out scenarios in his living room he will use for inspiration in his writing. His wife Shizuko (Yôko Hoshi) calls him a pervert but we soon learn that what bothers her is that she feels her husband has intellectualized his carnal desires and she feels physically neglected. Shizuko tries to make him jealous, or simply goes after what she desires with someone else. At first she brings home a Caucasian English teacher but soon zeros in on her husband's editor after witnessing his accomplished S&M rope tying technique. Kurosaki's first response is anger, then forgiveness, then he decides to use the affair as inspiration for his current work in progress. He demands that his editor continue the affair and recount all the sordid details to him. He slaps his editor upside the head, then forgives him and offers him a drink each time before they get to work.

I don't think this would be funny if it were an English language film. Part of its charm is feeling like a foreigner watching a Japanese film. Much of the humor is surely lost in translation but some of the translations take on a humor of their own. Often it feels like the words are too blunt and some subtlety of language is being missed, while other times it seems words are forced together into strange combinations to try and convey different shades of something not literally translatable. "Go anal". It's all played very sincerely, if somewhat surreal.

Speaking of surreal, one thing that puzzled me throughout this film was the house where most of the action takes place. The layout seems inscrutable, a labyrinth of hallways and doors. A character will walk down a hall, turn down another, and then open a sliding door to apparently go into a room. Then the camera is in the supposedly entered room but the door has hinges and no relation to a hallway. Kurosaki will serve his assistant a beer from one direction and then deliver a second one from a different location. There's one scene that appears to have no plot value where the maid exits a door, removes her shoes and plunges off the porch a couple feet to the ground, as if she expected a step of some kind to be present. I assume this scene is meant to convey that even the characters are a bit befuddled by the structure and layout of the house. Maybe I just missed something but this kind of scene does fit in with the overall strangeness of the film.

While this comes off as a small and amusing film, I think it was a big film for Ryuichi Hiroki, somewhat autobiographical, incorporating way more Japanese history and culture than I am privy to, and most importantly served as a great transition for him from a director of pinku films to more mainstream fare, albeit a little arthousey.

Summary: Directed by international rising star Ryuichi Hiroki and based on an autobiographical story by famous erotic novelist Oniroku Dan, I Am an S+M Writer is an entertaining, sophisticated sex farce as well as a humorous and provocative vision of sexual empowerment.

Kurosaki is a failed author who has turned to writing cheap S&M porn as a way to make a buck. Lacking expertise, and seeking inspiration for his writing, he has his assistant Kawada hire young models to stage various sexual scenarios. Naturally, Kurosaki’s wife isn’t happy discovering nubile young women tied up in the living room. Feeling neglected, she responds by first flirting with her athletic English teacher. Later, in a last ditch attempt to provoke some degree of interest in her husband, she turns to Kawada. When Kurosaki, a man more prone to ideas than carnal reality, learns what is going on, he desperately tries to turn the illicit affair into literary fodder.


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