Latest / Outskirts Film Podcast / #014 - Poetry of Depravity: A Deep Dive into Nikkatsu Roman Porno

Transcript

#014 - Poetry of Depravity: A Deep Dive into Nikkatsu Roman Porno · Outskirts Film Podcast

• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Outskirts Film Podcast.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Mirk Sofolo and today I'm joined by my co-hosts.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, I'm Christopher.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I'm Alonso.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Ret lovers, Sex Hunters, Tattooed Flowers, Feline Knights.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: There are perhaps a few too many film titles that captured the poetic depravity behind the adult film craze that reached its peak in Japan during the 1970s and 1980s.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: While sexuality had become a terrain of artistic and creative exploration in highbrow art of cinema internationally around the same time, it was a more profit-oriented perspective that led one of the Japan's oldest and most prestigious studios, Nikatsu, to shift its focus entirely to exploitation films.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Roman porno line, borrowing its name from French erotic literature, differed considerably from what came to be known as pink films, Pinko Ega.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Also referred to as Japanese irreduction, pink films were made and circulated outside the studio system.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Produced in extremely low budgets and with virtually no production or distribution infrastructure, a significant number of them weren't even properly preserved.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Nikatsu's launch of Roman Porno Line represented a strategic rebranding effort.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because the success of pink films had already demonstrated that sex would always sell, and the studio sought to elevate the quality of on-screen eroticism through greater technical and creative resources.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: While Roman Porno allowed many young and ambitious filmmakers, screenwriters, and cinematographers to develop their craft, it also operated under a set of rules that both constrained and contributed to artistic freedom.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Films were expected to run around 80 minutes and include a sex scene at least every 10 minutes, while the display of genitalia on screen was strictly prohibited.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: The visual and moral tension between censorship and explicitness resulted in highly idiosyncratic visions, best exemplified by filmmakers such as Tatsumi Kumashiro, Noboru Tanaka, and Masaru Konuma.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Over a period of 17 years, Nikatsu produced more than 800 Roman Porno films across a wide range of genres, with the studio moving toward more explicit, BDSM-oriented productions during the 80s.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: In today's episode, however, we will focus primarily on works from the 1970s, with the exception of Shinji Somai's Love Hotel.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: From Tatsumi Kumashiro, one of Roman Porno's most respected and creatively ambitious filmmakers, we will discuss Street of Joy and Lovers Are Wet.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Secret Chronicle She Beast Market and Knight of the Felines by Noboru Tanaka will allow us to explore the more evocative, sensual, and even romantic side of these films.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas Masuru Konuma's Flower and Snake, Yumeno Kuyosuko's Girl Hell and Tattooed Flower Vase will take us deeper into the fascination with genre excess and BDSM.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: I want to start by asking a very simple question and a very repetitive one.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think we've been like talking about this in many episodes, but I mean in Outskirts Film Podcasts, we haven't shied away from tackling the filmographies of transgressive artists like Doris Wishman or Valerin Borovczyk.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, these were people for whom provocation intentionally became a like a modus operandi.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: By comparison, I think Roman porno filmmakers were less auteurs than creative agents fueling this pleasure machine.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm curious, have you ever felt a lack of artistic momentum, which maybe also be described as this absence of authorist voice?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_05: I think um for for me what's really interesting about Nikatsu Roman Pono and these filmmakers is a way that these films are more honest about sex, even when the filmmaker is ha you know quite has quite a powerful autorial vision, in the sense that yes, probably a lot of them were somehow forced or kind of opportunity opportunistically took advantage of this circumstance to make films, so maybe necessarily they weren't so much interested in sex.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_05: But at the same time, maybe the ones that we are talking about, they clearly if if they weren't sexual deviants themselves, I mean they clearly got the assignment.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_05: You know, the filmmakers are kind of orbiting around this commercial instinct.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_05: Even in the most artistic of these films, the sex kind of lasts longer than it would in an like so-called arthouse film, let's say, because they really also just have this imperative literally to just show you that, you know, for the people in the audience who are jerking off.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_05: So somehow the fusion of like this high artistic sensibility and that like pure exchange, kind of commercial, commercial exchange, is one of the like is it's kind of the alchemy that makes these films so special to me.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_05: You know, there are films that are in this series that are more kind of crassly commercial, let's say, even if they do have these kind of very strange perverted sex or um are very kind of punchy and nasty and interesting in that right.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_05: But for most of the films, there is this kind of particular fusion of a kind of artistic sensibility and a kind of exploitative sexual um gaze, let's say.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: The Romanesque aspect of these films actually is very uh present in in a way that to me doesn't really I mean there is like naturally an exploitative exploitative element in how they're constructed around sex.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I think they really respect that like uh novelistic approach to storytelling, particularly even like in the early films, which I we can like get into that.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like they all have this kind of like very specific like setting and like a dialogue with some kind of like uh like be it like melodramatic or like noirish or like like narrative, which in a way is kind of like recontextualizing like different like strands of like uh like Japanese Japanese like popular like culture at the time and like historical, but historical also like uh popular expressions.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're really fully artless, uh perhaps in like traditional sense in how we like tend to interpret like exploitation films.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: In and and then you see like these filmmakers kind of like that that tension perhaps is more like present uh in the forefront, given that sense that they that yeah, they're doing like sex films, but also they're kind of like putting this like uh veneer around the sex films that to present them in a specific context in a specific way.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think uh kind of like allows for many of these filmmakers to show those like uh more like uh quote unquote artistic flourishes.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Here I think the industry presented like a template that they could work around to be it just like in a more like uh transactional way, or just like um or or in a way if they also wanted to like put forward their own like artistic uh perspective point of view in a way.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's also a tension between realism and the excess that is uh contained in these films because cle clearly very high production value, and you clearly see how crafty, how elaborate all the set pieces, especially in the in the films like Castellorgies or the historical period drama type of um versions of Roman Porno, you can you can you can invest or like invest yourself as a viewer in this uh narrative uh context even while watching uh the transgressive very depraved moments of sex, there's this coherence that is contained in the film.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: That coherence of of spatial temporality, there there of obviously there are like crazy elements in it.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: But overall, I think there's this what you said about maybe the Romanesque uh aspect comes from that too.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe um the tension that is created in the film is this internal logic of the film still holds until the very end.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it you still watch a film like a proper film.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: To that aspect of being seen being like perceived as proper films.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think that also goes beyond just the narrative, which is like perhaps more elaborate than you would usually expect in like again, like a sex film.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: But also they don't they we're not like in Doris Western territory of being like slapped together, kind of like clearly like uh cheaply made films.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like they feel like as you were saying, like also like a plastic level, they feel like proper films that just happen to be sex films and exploitative.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it's interesting, also like to like that kind of subversion that happens with expectations, uh, which I also intrigued to think about like what happened to the audiences at the time.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I think still we also have to be aware that like we as I said, there are 800 films, so obviously we're only touching the surface of the like creme de la creme.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe Castle Orgies is a bit like that, even if it's I think the I don't know what you thought about the film, uh, but to me while watching it, okay, this is important just because it's the first film.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I I I can see the the the aspects we talk about, the historical uh accuracy and the plastic side, but otherwise uh compared to the films that I've seen uh while preparing this episode, I was a bit disappointed, for example.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there are films like that, maybe that are less um that are less conforming to what we just said about uh transparency and narrative coherence.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: You you definitely feel kind of like uh initially like, oh, am I in like a Akira Kurosawa film?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh for because it looks like I mean it looks like a like a proper like uh period like period piece, like epic here in a way, at least like at the beginning.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then it naturally like turns more towards this almost um only like enclosed uh doors, like scenes, uh which I think is also like interesting given like uh the kind of like melodramatic arc it's going for.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: That one, which again is one of the it's the first tall feature they they made uh Nikatsu uh in in this like uh series.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it does show perhaps more and as um there wasn't really like a formula there yet, uh which I guess like the formula never really became like a full-on like a branded thing.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can really see like two different uh impulses in that film kind of being meshed together in a way that doesn't really perhaps like flow organically.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Although that film I think kind of like was closer, I was saying before we started recording, closer to what I expected these films to be.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess like many of these films are like this, like uh 60 minutes plus just like stitch together sex scenes, but I guess like the the the like the scenes themselves, the narrative themes are are what's kind of also like very distinctive.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: In I guess like why would this be this very uh ornate like narrative about like it's a shogunette uh mate servant, like there's like a lot of like intrigue in there, which is like oh interesting.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like uh I didn't expect this to be like intersecting these uh sex scenes themselves.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: And also like that's in that film, I think what perhaps it's like the latent crime of that film is like the sex scenes themselves, I don't feel like are as interesting interestingly shot as in like perhaps all the other films that I saw.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, in that sense you can see like the that perhaps more initial just attempt to like create something out of nothing.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_05: I think a few times we've really looked at these periods of film history that are like often considered like the the fallow period, kind of like the disreputable uh part of history that doesn't have many defenders.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_05: Um often that you know, in then you know can burst something else in in opposition to it.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_05: Like I'm thinking, for example, of Edward Yang, where we did the opposite.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_05: You know, we talked about Edward Yang, and Edward Yang was someone who really um explicitly was part of a movement against a very certain kind of like crass commercial Taiwanese cinema.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and when we talked about Mako Kaji, of course, uh part of the reason that she stopped making films in Nikatsu was that she didn't want to get involved in Roman porno, and that's kind of why her career went in the direction that it did.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_05: As Alonzo was saying, I see like a really rare moment where, in fact, these films weren't really kind of crass commercialism.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_05: They were commercial in the sense that they had to have sex scenes, but other than that, I think there was a lot of room for experimentation beyond that point.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_05: And what also like seems to be a really interesting historical um confluence in these films is that a lot of the major directors that are specifically associated with this movement uh really seem to be kind of like fish in water, you know, that their their sensibility also really matched this subject matter.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know enough about their life to know, you know, whether they were tormented by the fact that they had to make these films.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_05: But if you look at uh someone like Tatsumi Kumashiro or Nobura Tanaka or Masuro Konuma, like these directors are like perfect for this genre.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_05: Like this is the kind of film that they are making, you know, it's perfectly fused together.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_05: You know, Kumashiro uh like has this very, very distinctive style, which is like the kind of sexual perversion in that film, becomes almost like this kind of amoral playing card.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_05: In Tanaka, it's like this like very bleak vision of sex in um She Beast Market, and then in Konuma, there's this kind of this like absolute embrace of like the kind of almost ostentatiously perverse aspects of these films, but you don't like you know, it doesn't quite feel like they're making the films they want to make with sex scenes awkwardly shoehorned in.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_05: It's like it's a total vision in some sense, and you know, even even the like weaker films in this program maybe still have that, you know, like they're still very much kind of unified commercial products, they're not just genre films with sex scenes spliced in, which is like very common to see that in this period, I think.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Especially with Tanaka, for example, Night of the Felines.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: I I've been talking about this film, like even because I watched it before you guys, and I was so impressed by that film, like I was touched by by it's by the feelings that the characters and the because the these are characters, like there are there's a storyline, there's a tragedy, and I was touched by that story.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think it's the case for uh all the films in this program, but the the fact that there are cases, there are films that manage to achieve that is fascinating to me.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: And even um same again, it's a Tanaka film, but uh She Beast Market, it's also like at the end you you find yourself filled with this very nihilist but also joyful emotional state.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: So at least maybe not everyone will feel the same, but those films also touch me on an emotional level, at least some of them.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I mean those those two films like together, both by Naburu Tanaka, uh like very fascinating insight into who that person was.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_05: It's not a name that I knew before starting this series.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_05: Um but in particular I think when you watch Shibi's Market, it's like this amazing uh like I said, I said it was kind of like early live diaz, but squeezed into like 70 minutes, which I mean as a compliment.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_05: Um because it's just like absolutely bleak and miserable and pitiless, but combined with this like real excitement for filmmaking, which is kind of jarring.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_05: So just like the way that faces are shot, the way that people are moving, the way that sex is shot, just like this vision of this like terribly desolate um Osaka outskirts.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_05: The lead character is a prostitute, her mother is a prostitute, they have these like horrible arguments over men, the people are getting arrested, people are getting killed, there's like these uh neighborhood street urchins hanging around.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_05: Uh it's a very bleak film, but you know, within every scene there's like this amazing sense of kind of formal invention.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_05: You know, it's like Tanaka is this kind of really visionary director, and also at the end it switches from black and white to colour.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_05: Um it's packed with these kind of very kind of surrealistic um descents into madness, which is something that many of these films uh do.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_05: And then in uh Knight of the Felines, uh, which I also like a lot, is yeah, it's this kind of m much more I would say explicitly playing with the kind of if you could say like the the genre of the kind of uh sex worker, you know, bunch of sex workers in a single location, um, which is like a very big trope in in Japanese cinema, and I think also is in Street of Joy, if I'm not mistaken, and you know, cut comes from Mizuchi, like the you know, it's a very common thing in in Japanese cinema.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_05: And in that one, you know, it's like also very kind of quote-unquote artistic, but it also has like a much more kind of populist impulse, you know, it's much more kind of um loud and soapy and lots of like melodrama between the girls, even though it kind of does also end in this like um I don't want to say Antonioni-esque, but like this kind of like bitterly ironic modernist touch at the end where you see these uh shutters of the the street stalls closing as this couple have just uh spent a night of debauchery together.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_05: Like so just you know, just like you take two films by a single director, one of the better-known directors, I think, of the Roman porno cycle, and you just see this like enormous range that you can get in these films.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and they're made two years apart, you know, and they're just completely different.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_05: And I don't know, that that's really fascinating to me.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_05: Like, also in the course of this, you know, we saw three films by Masaru Konoma, which we can talk about, you know, in a little bit, maybe, but again, that's you know, just three random films, and they're just like there's a really powerful artistic sensibility there at the same time as there's a big range between those films, you know, like they're they're very different even though they're made in a few successive years.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: What I like about Tanaka is also that you can uh direct your gaze into different aspects uh in the image because I think uh it opens up to different emotional and exist even existential questions because I think in the Knight of the Feland it's more of like the idea of yearning, of like losing someone, of like idealizing idealization of someone and not being able to have them, like to to consummate the this togetherness is a as a theme.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the in and chibeast market, these are so full-fledged characters that you can um especially Tomé, you can sense her anguish of like her existential dread of realizing that what she's been she was brought into this world and she's also part of the cycle that what brought her to the world and she can't escape that.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: And once she realizes that it's so powerful uh and overwhelming that you you also sympathize with her.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: She's not just like uh a sex worker like in many Japanese films.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that was one of the things that really uh like struck me in Tanaka's films, but in in um in Kumashiro uh on the other hand, it's more like um crazy experimentations or more like formal playfulness, and because uh he he is more I think prone to try new things.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: The relationship to genre itself, and this like I was just saying, like this experimental flourishes with the title cards, the animation, uh just like the set construction of the film itself.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I was trying to articulate why this film didn't really like catch me that much.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's part of like there there's if you see just like what the film is, as Chris was saying, it it's very much it could be like a like uh like geja melodrama from like the 40s perfectly.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Besides all the like actually the sex scenes.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: But even the sex scenes in this film, they feel to be they don't they aren't really uh exploitative per se.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're very much like transactional in the sense of like the the the the middle of the characters are inhabited.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: So they feel kind of like just like a like throw-off element of the kind of like the again, this specific uh place, like this this is a physical space, kind of like another element that's throwing there, but it's not really kind of like the focus of the film.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Here it feels like there's kind of like a standoff between what the the setting would ensue and would mean like uh stylistically, and what the filmmaker is trying to get there, so it's kind of like an attempt absorbers, which in this case uh I don't really feel it like to me, it creates more like uh not like noise into like the immersion to the film that really uh should perhaps.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because he also uses that um censorship element like that, like overtly like uh let literally showing into our faces like the black giant rectangle.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I think this idea of like um interrupting the the flow or like creating gaps is to me was his thing as a filmmaker.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe it's less present than Lovers Are Wet.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like you you feel it's more like a like a a full picture rather than like it's it's it's very primal, it's very animalistic, but it's still overall animalistic, it's not like uh stitched up together.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: But like I don't know, in Street of Joy there are some there are rather moments that really touch me, like the whole the Kimiko singing the song about the bride.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like there are some moments and elements that kind of touch you or keep you watching or like remain after you finish the film rather than the film itself.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's more of these like a small things that that that remain behind.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and I also like that it's it's like uh set in one night and it creates this um a narrative uh framework that sometimes like some films don't, like this this whole chamber piece choral drama, I think it works better in that setting too.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, from the one side, so that that that was perhaps the one that was clearly like uh like felt felt like a novella, just like in how it flowed, and that that's just in like the four intertwined characters, and you basically jump from one to the other.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's not like the main tone, I'll say, but it has like some of these like moments of levity, which I also like appreciate because I bet I guess we'll get into that later on.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: But like uh sex in these films uh is very like tragic and like isn't really like a joyful element at all.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: In this film, it isn't as well, but at least like the ambience around it, it kind of like has these moments of uh like relating to sex as this like just like a almost like a uh clock in, clock out kind of thing, and then like there's other moments of like as you're saying, like the sinking and just like the hanging out is there.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh whereas my other films, um yeah, like sex seems to be ironically kind of like you see this film, it's like, oh yeah, sex will ruin my life.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe maybe we can talk a bit about the depictions of rape that we've been exposed to in the couple of uh last couple of days.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, it's it's it it's hard to discuss this, maybe, like, or because you can't just like talk about them being simple, pure aesthetic depictions.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's it's almost like actually I think almost like the sex workers in these films have the best sex, you know, like paradoxically, because you know, at least for them they get something out of it, which is money.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_05: In the other films, it's usually just these kind of uh yeah, like uh very arbitrary rapes that just come out of nowhere and just destroy people's lives.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you know, I think it's impossible in some way to try to apply a moral framework to these movies.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, I realized at some point that I basically stopped doing that.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_05: Um, because it's just not really kind of the right way to see them somehow.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_05: I think you just like if if you come into it with that, you you will almost not be able to appreciate them even on a very basic level.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_05: Because they kind of take, I mean, you know, it varies from film to film, but like if you just take the idea of rape, um, which, you know, if I think about for example, Straw Dogs by Sam Pecking Paw, uh, which has this one famous rape scene where the character as she like as she's being raped, she starts to enjoy it.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_05: And, you know, that's like one of the most famous and controversial rape scenes in film history, and that exact scenario happens in almost all of these films, sometimes multiple times.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_05: But I think, you know, watching a film like Lovers Are Wet, for example, um, which is all about this kind of non-consensual sex, I guess, on some level, um, like the the kind of like perversity of that idea becomes something almost I don't know how to say this, almost kind of exalted in some way in that film, because the film becomes itself like this deeply perverse, almost unreadable object, you know, it becomes this kind of almost like performance piece in a way, in which like this rapes are somehow part of that, you know, and it's also one of those things that like now I'm hearing myself say this, and it sounds like like kind of justifying the most horrible things you can imagine, but somehow like the the atmosphere of these movies, you know, allows you to to somehow kind of um indulge in these like very dark aspects of a human personality, and I mean it really varies from film to film, honestly.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you know, I think in Kumashiro's case in Lovers of Wed, I think it's like a very kind of like profound part of an artistic personality, an artistic sensibility that you feel in that film, whereas in other films it's just something kind of perfunctory that happens to the characters.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_05: Uh whereas in yeah, like She Beast Market, for example, it's something like very horrible, very over the top, very Lav Dias in some way.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like in the early uh Roman Porno films, like early 70s, this psychological aspect of sex is more present.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas uh as the studio moved on and made more and more films like uh into the 80s, I think it's more about sex rape as uh itself.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's just there without like uh requiring any justification or input into the character.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's just there, and how can we like put this or go like push this forward in a way, as especially in the BDSM style 80s films, like Zoom Apartments, Rape Apartments Zoom in is also an 80s film.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_05: I think rape in film history is itself something that has been very abused, but I would say particularly in arthouse films, because rape is something, it's this kind of like ultimate sin in a way, but it also comes with the benefits of these filmmakers of showing um women being degraded, and therefore you also not only get to show the crime, but you also get to show like the miserabilism of a woman being destroyed.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_05: And like this is something that you see in Mizaguchi, something that you see in many, many like artist filmmakers after that, also Lav Dias.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_05: Um and in those films, there is I often I mean this is very generalizing, but I often really struggle with that because I feel like those filmmakers are trying to have it both ways, like they are trying to scold you for uh or trying to make a moral point about the world, or rather, I would say a moralistic point about the world, but they're also like simultaneously scolding you as an audience, and also I think there's of course the ulterior um motivation of like showing this spectacle of sexual violence and like enjoying it on some level.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_05: So, what I will say for these films at the very least is that there is like just an honesty there that is like very difficult to take a lot of the time because it's very ugly and it touches on very ugly part of the human personality, but it is honest.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: In Kimizoguchi's case, I think they depict rape, but that that doesn't have happen or behind the scenes, like it's it's a fiction, it's a pure fiction.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: But in Nikatsu Roman Porno, I think like m in in many like real porn porn production, this is a reality, and that's why I think uh an Angel God's Red Classroom is I only saw that film, but is interesting because it brings this meta aspect.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you see a film uh depicting the this this depraved sexual activity, it never stays there.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like that that that goes beyond that filmic re uh filmic uh realm.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it that film really acknowledges that, and that's why I think it was a very interesting watch for me.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_05: It's very interesting that I like I can't think of another example in film history where a studio or filmmaker or whoever turned towards sex films but still maintained a kind of high uh production value.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that's also like one of the things that makes this like such an interesting cycle is that they really kind of it was consciously designed that way that we're like, okay, we're the oldest studio and we're gonna make this pivot, but somehow we will like sustain these films with big budgets and we won't just uh you know use hack directors and so on.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's so unique because it's also uh they wanted to appeal more like female uh dominated or like female audiences too, like that woman can also watch these films too.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think maybe that's why there's like a less blood violence in like I'm I'm not talking about like an orgasm, uh, maniko but Mariko, but uh overall I think it's more like there is this uh literate literary element, like some of these films are literary adaptations, or at least they uh refer to or like link to early periods of Japanese history, Japanese literature.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's this um there's this definitely an intention of like uh bringing highbrow aesthetics or perspective into the films, not necessarily of what like we see on the screen, but through through like filmic text.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, you see like I mean Love Hotel is one of the last films that we saw from this cycle.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_05: I think it wasn't actually produced at Nik by Nikatsu, it was produced by a separate company and then distributed through Nikatsu as a Roman porno film, but I mean you know that's that's an author film, I mean, for lack of a better word, you know, like that's uh by that point, you know, this it seems to have gone in quite another direction.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think that what kind of like frames it within the like Roman porno like um tradition to me is also how it dialogues with pop elements, I guess, of like uh popular elements that are in in within like these films.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: In this case, like I I can see like you can see like the the the Roman porno um exploitative elements in as we're saying to the the way the depicts like the tragic element the tragic uh nature of it as well, but also kind of like the I guess like the jacuzza veneer as well in a way kind of puts it in kind of like an intersection of different strands to me, and it kind of feels to me kind of like a culmination of sorts of uh all the clearly it's not like purely like a like an as Roman porno as the other ones we saw, but I think it feels kind of I wouldn't say like necessarily like more hybrid version, but kind of like takes those elements and phrases with perhaps more like a distinctive of like idiosyncratic like uh formal approach, which is like what Somay does in this film.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: We've been discussing like all these like rape scenes and all these like uh kind of like uh very tragic elements in these films.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: When in this one, I guess like the tone it itself it creates is very mournful, mournful as well.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Here, like the main character uh he kind of witnesses the rape of his wife by and like and then immediately like transitions towards like this uh self-destructive, like uh toxic like sex scene, and then creates this kind of like whole narrative around it.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: When uh like whereas in other films, you saw kind of like uh a subject of violence, particularly being like this like different like uh female characters.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: And here you also have like the perpetrator perpetrator of violence being like psychological cards, so it kind of creates that even more like sordid um like world where we can only have it in if perhaps the like more like sex-negative like sex film I've seen in a while.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_05: I mean that that film, I mean it it is this kind of you know, of the kind of ten or so films that were sort of on our radar for research here.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it is a little bit of a UFO, you know, in the sense it's kind of like this outsider coming in and making something, but it's uh yeah, as Alonso said, like this kind of sex negative vibe of the film is very, very strong.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_05: And also, yeah, just like combined with these really bravura single shot scenes, which are never kind of like um they they aren't single shots which are kind of just overbearing and domineering, they are like overwhelming, overflowing with um creative energy.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_05: You know, in that in the opening scene that you described, basically where this uh guy picks up a sex worker, takes her to the love hotel, uh, and turns out that he's gonna commit suicide and he wants to take someone with him, so he starts to torture her, and then he gets he changes his mind, and then it jumps two years later when he meets her again.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_05: Um in that scene it's pretty stark, and these long takes are really trapping you within this scene, and it's very, very difficult to watch.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_05: But later there's a scene where they're in a his he's he's a taxi driver years later and he picks her up, and there's just this scene where they're driving in his taxi, and Somai's camera is like able like you can feel that he even within the restricted space of the taxi is kind of hyperactive and needs to move, and it's just it's so beautiful to me because you just feel him like pushing against the limits almost of what was possible, you know, because the camera starts to move almost onto the dashboard, and you can feel it kind of pushing into the windshield, but just trying to find an angle where both people can be in the frame, you know, like there's such a cr restless creative energy, and then you know it finds the right position and then it starts moving again, even though it's quite a distinctive and um anomalous Nick Roman Porno.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_05: In some way, it does capture this kind of paradox of these films, is that they're like often quite nihilistic, but like formerly optimistic in some way, you know, like packed with uh the joy of making films, really.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_05: You know, like even the most bleak of these films, I think is kind of just powered by this restless creative energies, and that that to me is pretty inspiring about seeing all these films together.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think what I like about La Wotel, after everything what you said, is also that it the the desire, the exploration of desire is not necessarily one-sided, that it gives um um even if it's like a very tortu like a torturing and and tragic desire that we have two there are two centers of the film.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's not just like one person being doing something and the other being becoming their object.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's really them, like even if even if this is the the perverted desire comes from their action, uh ultimately it evolves into something uh mutual.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is very like you we can like moralistically condemn this, but still it's at the end of the day this too it's like a tragic love story, or maybe like a yeah, maybe like a passion story, and I think we haven't seen many films in this group that reflects that.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I mean though the yeah, maybe we can we can talk about those two those two films by Masaru Konoma, which are I mean were two big discoveries for me.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_05: I mean you know, I think we we watched first um this film he made called Tattooed Flower Vase from 1976, which just kind of I think what what we realized afterwards is maybe that we watched his later kind of reworking of his own work in a way, like his own kind of knockoff of his own work, and that wasn't I mean that wasn't a particularly interesting film to me, even though it does you know have a lot of um interesting, perverse flights of fancy, like uh Tattooed Vagina, uh most memorably from that film.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_05: Um but yeah, this like kind of one-two punch from Konuma, uh Flower and S Flower and Snake, and um the full title is You May Know Kyos Q You May Know Kyosako's Girl Hell, uh aka Girl Hell, uh, which is like both films pretty pretty high up on the perversity scale.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_05: Uh in in our list, particularly Flower and Snake, which goes to some real depths, uh, particularly involving a scene with an enema.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and I think that was also like the first um that that was one of those like earlier big successes for the Roman porno, if I'm not mistaken, for the cycle that really kind of showed how far these films could go and help to kind of legitimize it as a really you know serious um creative force.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_05: Because as I understand it, also at this at this time, you know, these films weren't pushed aside, like they they were regularly featured in critics' polls of the best films of the year in Japan.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know how much they traveled to international festivals, but within Japan they had a very good reputation, and these directors also had a very good reputation.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_05: It's very unusual in the history of sex films to have something like this happen.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_05: Flower and Snake, I think, is this very a film that really like pushes this to its absolute limit.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_05: You know, it has something in common, I would say, with like the late 60s films that uh Yesuzu Masamura was making.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_05: But in this case, it's the story of this uh owner of a large corporation whose wife is not having sex with him anymore, so he pays his employee who himself is a pervert and has this kind of um uh very Freudian relationship with his domineering mother, and they together run this crazy sex shop.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_05: So the head of the corporation sends his wife there to become a slut, and basically the whole film is just her being kind of sexually tortured in various crazy ways and learning how to use her power as a sexual force to basically escape and to get inside the mind of the guy who's torturing her.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_05: And meanwhile, Girl Hell is this kind of like one of those like ultimate late 70s female exploitation films, I would say, like set in a girls' boarding school, um, where there's a kind of devoutly religious principal, uh headmaster who is like raping all the girls, uh, has children with those girls, uh, has children with the mothers of the girls, and basically it's like this kind of den of hypocrisy where these girls have to kind of also learn to be violent in some way.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_05: Kumashiro, who's really, I mean, as a as a as a directorial voice, has been a big, big discovery for me, is I think someone who's, yeah, as I said earlier, just like a fish swimming in these waters, you know, it's almost like this would he was born to make these films.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_05: Whereas I think Konuma is more like I think into the exploitation aspect, and so is like making these films.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_05: Like he just gets the assignment and he's like, okay, I'm gonna make this as fucked up as I can.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you also wonder like who can who would like spend so much money on such like depraved, crazy subjects?
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's it's a very especially the scenes of her his like uh delirious state of fantasizing about the uh his mother, the this the the the fantasy scenes especially are crazy.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I think when you get to the bondage, it's more it it has a specific construction, but like if it's a fantastic fantasy dream scene, then you have you need to like construct that image.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: You have to build an image of fantasy.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's very elaborate and uh impressive uh compared to other more like fucked up uh pure uh transgression scenes in the film.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_05: Naomi Tani is the star of these films.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_05: And also I was, you know, I was looking at her filmography.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_05: I know Uku, you know some insights about her life and probably what she had to suffer to make these films.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_05: I also saw that like her most popular film on Letterboxd is a film called Haunted Turkish Bath House that I see that Alonso has actually seen and given the ultimate three stars and a heart.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, that was interesting because I think that was my first it isn't like a Nikatsuran porno film, it's like a Pinkwega film.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I can totally because doing that film kind of like install in my mind what these films would be like, which isn't necessarily the case.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: This one was made by Toy, so I think they jump on the bowl in a way and kind of like created their own version of that.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: But it's uh though that tiny film uh with those kind of like uh J horror like folk elements and essentially it's like very gratitude violence all the time.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's like very goofy as well, and it feels kind of like stuffed together in a very erratic sense.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of like to me, it makes more sense we've looked at a wider history of like sex films, and then to like go from that to the Nikatsu Roman porno films kind of feels almost like delicatessen in a way, like, oh, this is like the highest form of like she when she went, was going to this like Hollywood film uh actors go to to make a European film kind of the equivalent just within like the ultra-niche of like Japanese sex films?
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: Hotestukish Bad House uh that the title kind of like uh says it all.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, actually, that filmmaker uh Kazohiko Yamaguchi is the filmmaker that made uh Wandering Against a Butterfly, which we all loved on the Meiko Kaji episode.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: It all comes together.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean there are a lot of like parallels and paths crossing in this in the in this period basically, because like how many studios were there out uh were out there?
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's it's obvious.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: And they were probably borrowing technicians and like people are art artists collaborating with each other.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: We talked a lot about the filmmakers, but the particular aspect and the visual but also formal elements stem also from the actress's presence.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: The way um a particular particular actress looked, uh her body, her hair, her face, these mattered to to the studio, and obviously it creates kind of like are these like sex slaves that pick, like, oh, I want someone who has the best, better body, like who's more like shapy, shapely form.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it kind of feels a bit icky to like talk about this, but obviously Naomi Tani uh for them represents this aristocratic, uh, more uh proud uh look, and that's why she was always like cast as this wealthy businessman's wife who does who don't who who doesn't like submit.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not just this film Flower and Snake, and she uh played this role or its reiterations in other films as well.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: So she was more into like um bondage and uh BDS time because her body, when like the ropes are tight around her, her body parts would like stick out from the ropes, so that would give a more like obviously fucked up pleasure to men watching it.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas uh the castellorgy star Setsuko Ogawa had this very tragic of like very white and uh aristocratic, but from the early centuries Japan phase.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: So she would star more in period dramas, historical films.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think she's one of my favorite uh Meikaseri.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: I I really like her.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh she's the she's the leading lady in uh She Beast Market.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: She has a very interesting voice.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's what I like the most about her.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: She has like this tiredness or like this kind of disinterest in her voice that really I like like listening to her speaking.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: I know this is for old dubbed or whatever, but still I like her screen presence a lot.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: She has more like Monica Vitti modern vibe.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um she brings that vibe into the films.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's also another technical in uh uh invention or its popularity that kind of led into its decline, which is like uh VHS and DVDs that like made porn available everywhere.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, but I wish I like had the chance to watch more films from the 80s to understand how the studio on a more aesthetic uh level was pushing its own limits.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_05: We saw this film Orgasm Mariko, co-directed by Fumihiko Kato.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_05: That's a very imaginative film.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_05: Like it's it does does not disappoint.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's a very, very, very interesting film.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_05: It's kind of this rape revenge, the woman who's having sex with her sweetheart, and he gets killed.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_05: They're having sex under a bridge next to the highway, and a truck drives past, and the truck driver throws a glass bottle out the window and kills the boyfriend.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_05: And because it's happening while she's on her period and it's the full moon, she kind of gets this kind of like menstrual rage, and so she goes around raping truck drivers, or letting truck drivers seemingly rape her, and then killing them while they're having sex with her, and then she has an orgasm while they die.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_05: So, yeah, it's also like this kind of like height of perversity and debauchery, and it's like it's written by the guy who wrote Hausu, and you know, it's kind of exploding with all of these kind of crazy images of a blood-red moon and um kind of like almost like come shots out of blood in a way, like as she like stabs them as she's having an orgasm and she gets bathed in blood, and she's clearly loving it.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_05: There's all this stuff, but like speaking to what Oika was talking about, there you can tell that like there's a kind of lowering of the artistic standard by this point, you know.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_05: You can just you can feel it in the film, even though it's a very creative film, lots of wonderful images, and it's going for broke, the the production value is less and it's much more kind of um direct to the point about sex because once you kind of get the premise and you think okay, wow, it's this kind of film, and you know it's 69 minutes, so you like you're expecting things to move at quite a clip, you realize that the sex scenes last a really long time.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, like much longer than isn't the kind of necessary as narrative, they just go on and on and on, and it's like these very salacious shots of the protagonist's body.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_05: So you can just kind of feel that by that point like the commercial side has started to kind of take root a little bit more inside these films, I would say.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can say like by the late 80s, not with Nikakatsu, but late 80s, early 90s, you kind of start to see like the rise of like the like splatter, like a sexually deviant, like uh like Japanese underground films, like uh the Guinea Pig series, like is it the splatter naked, like naked clothes, those kind of films.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like to me, what my introduction to is kind of like uh um I don't know, like the Jap like the Japanese sex film umbrella.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, in a way, perhaps going towards those like less reputable, even less reputable and more expositive and even like in bad faith for forms of like underground filmmaking.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like if these films were going to like for the ext explicitly for the extreme of being extreme, then then like the perhaps the more like contained and like still like safekeeping some sort of like filmic standard of like uh the Nikatsu and porno than was like set to fail things.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I mean this this kind of like boogie knights arc that is like so familiar to people who are interested in pornographic films.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you you'll you'll find no clearer case of it than in Nikatsurum and porno because if you like just as an example, you look at these kind of three main directors we've been speaking about.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_05: Um uh Tatsumi Kumashiro uh was kind of like at the real vanguard of like making these movies, like his early films, like uh Lovers Are Wed, which we've talked about, Woods A Wed, Ichio's Wed Lust, um, The World of Geisha, like these were all kind of like these very, very important uh Roman porno films, and he was making those kinds of films right up until the early 80s, but then it completely fell off, you know, around 82, 83, 84, 85.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_05: He he was gone.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_05: If you also look at Masoro Konuma, there's a huge drop-off there just based on the kinds of films that he made after that, you know.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_05: Like those are films that are not really revived today.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I don't think they have a lot of fans beyond 1980.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_05: Same as uh Noboru Tanaka, you know, like he again, you know, but it's this time 1980 struck, uh he had a couple of things left in him, and then then it was kind of over.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_05: That's like such a received wisdom about the history of pornography, but it is also it also happens to be kind of dramatically true in most cases.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: I guess it is suffice to say that just as its creation was prompted by the demands of a public transformed by technology, the decline of Roman porno line was also closely tied to technological changes in the audiovisual landscape.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: The the popularization of VHS and home video made the theatrical experience of adult film increasingly burdensome and obsolete.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the Roman porno line came to a rather abrupt end in 1988.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, the pink film genre survived because in the 1990s there were the Four Heavenly Kings of Pink, which was a new generation of directors comprising Kazuhiro Sano, Hisayasu Sato, Toshihiko Sato, and Takahisa Zeze.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: And in the 2000s there was also a group known as the Seven Lucky Gods of Pink.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: So Pink film genre kinda adapted itself to the means of production of new decades, new more digital landscape.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I think ultimately the very existence of these films was strongly connected to the taboos surrounding sex and sexuality.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: As sex became increasingly omnipresent in media landscape, there was obviously less demands for inventive adult films, which would be designed for theatrical exhibition, because sexual content was already everywhere basically.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_01: This also I think helps to understand why Roman Porno existed in the particular historical moment it existed, why these filmmakers made films particularly in the 70s and 80s.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: But not to forget also the Roman Porno reboot project, which was launched in 2016.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_01: This was a project by Nikatsu uh to celebrate the 45th anniversary of Roman Porno.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the studio commissioned five filmmakers to create Roman Porno tribute-like films, like inspired by them obviously, but also adhering to the same production rules that the original filmmakers uh had to follow while making those films.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: The most famous films from this reboot were Wat Woman in the Wind by Akihiko Shiyota and obviously uh Sion Sono's Anti Porno.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: There was also a second wave of three additional films, I think.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to check them out, they should be available to rent or buy.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that was Nikatsu Roman Porno.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: But before we wrap up and talk about the films we saw lately, I also want to remind our listeners that there is a Nikatsu Roman Porno retrospective in Paris, which kicked off this week in La Cinematic Française, and in which I'll be introducing five films beginning with this Sunday.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're in Paris and want to listen to me talk more about She Beast Market, Girl Hell, Angel Guts, and Scent of a Spell and The World of Geisha, those two films we haven't discussed in this podcast, but feel free to check La Cinematek website and drop me a message.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: So after this brief advertising moment, what have you guys been watching lately?
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: Anything interesting aside uh crazy fucked up porno films?
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that was it for our very introductory exploration of like uh Mikatsu Roman Porno.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_00: But we'd say it's this uh deranged pornographic uh explorations.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what else have you been watching?
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I mean this has quite consumed a lot of my attention because I saw quite a lot of them.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_05: Have you guys seen Greenland?
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, I saw you saw both of them.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_05: I was kind of like kind of surprised by that.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, so I'm talking about 2020 and 2026's Greenland and Greenland 2 Migration, starring Gerald Butler.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: No, it sounds right up on my alley.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_05: I I did think of you a few times.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_05: It's like uh it's very kind of uh just you know, down and dirty, unpretentious, but also uh kind of gets a lot of the pleasures of disaster films uh while avoiding a lot of the kind of overt sentimentality about the end of the world.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_05: I mean it's a very kind of conservative film, uh obviously.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_05: I mean that goes without saying, but there's a kind of you know, all disaster films are about the family in some way, and this one is no exception, but it does tease some interesting things out of that.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and and it like also it's smart enough to kind of get out of its own way in delivering you the pleasures of seeing the world destroyed.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_05: Um so I recommend it.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_05: I mean the second one is not very good, honestly, although it is kind of like this fascinatingly histrionic and overdone um expansion of that first one.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it's already kind of ridiculous that the first film is called Greenland because it's named after the place that they're going to.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_05: So basically, the world is about to be wiped out by a series of comets.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_05: It's about this family making their way to Greenland where there's an underground base where all of humanity will survive the comets.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, but the second one, you know, they they're in the base and the world has been destroyed, and then they come out of the base and they go to England and France, which is this kind of post-apocalyptic landscape.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, I mean, pretty silly pleasures, but definitely the first one I I could actually recommend is a pretty solid um Saturday afternoon type of movie.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_05: What about you guys?
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um I still need to finish my Vision du Real dispatch, so I'm catching up with some titles I've wanted to see, but I missed.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I saw a documentary from the international competition, uh, meanwhile in Namibia.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: The premise was very uh interesting, so I really wanted to watch this and I was sad that I missed in the theater, but upon watching it, I was a bit I don't want to say disappointed, but I expected more in terms of formal vision because uh the subject matter is very, very interesting.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's Namibia is actually um colonized in the early 20th century by Germany, like colonized meaning like they sent settlers, German settlers to live there.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, uh they don't recognize the atrocities they committed uh during that period because the word term genocide wasn't invented then, the same with the Armenian genocide with the Turkey.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um so this is their excuse of telling, yeah, we did like terrible things there, but it's not a genocide.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, they uh like have projects of uh development aid or like cultural projects to help Namibia develop or like as if it's a way to like erase their crimes, basically.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_01: And but at the same time, uh German tourists still uh go there, visit uh Namibia, not only German, but um uh mo mostly German.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you we can uh on the landscape but also in the population, you can clearly see the the effects of clo uh c colonialism which now have become neocolonialism.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: But to me, I mean you obviously feel uh completely like uh destroyed by the the level of like audacity, the level of like uh indifference of these tourists like going there and how how like they have zero awareness of their own position.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's it's quite shocking like in 2026, how can these people like behave without any like filter in their like brains?
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's very shocking.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, the the some scenes where we are uh told about the genocide of the history is so poorly uh constructed, like you can clearly understand that like two Namibian citizens wouldn't like tell each other the genocide, so it's just like too stagey, I think, uh for the most of the part.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the development aid uh is um a huge uh part constant um the development aid uh uh actually is a big chunk of the film like that revolves around this project of living uh history museum that German NGOs come and propose their projects.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_01: So they want the local communities that build these living history museums to promote their countries basically, but to promote to for who?
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: For for German tourists, and they are asked to like build their own museum themselves, they just give them money.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_01: But this whole process of living museums were very chunky in the film because the idea it's very harrowing.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_01: They want them to re-enact like pre-colonial cultural practices in their very like traditional clothes, whereas these people are already past that.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is not their culture anymore, because you can't erase colonialism, you can't pretend that as it as if it didn't happen.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, these people have a different culture now, and this is violence, it's so obvious, but for us, but not to them.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_01: Still, I think because it was a process that needed to be like uh followed more uh in-depth, it's just uh edited in a very sloppy way, I would say, like cuts and with fade outs with intertitles, without really building into scenes, but just like chunks of information.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_01: I wish it was it it had a lot of promising uh I think subjects, but it goes to neither direction because there are some like moments of Ulrich Seidel, like you know, very frontal perspective shots.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_01: There are some observational documentary aspects to it, but it's neither of them fully developed.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of films and these documentary film festivals like suffer from this.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: You go you want to watch a film because the subject matter is very uh fascinating, or like you want to learn about it and you learn, but the film itself.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: Becomes very instrumental in that uh in that in that process.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: How about you, Alonso?
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like a contemporary film, but I won't speak about it.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh rather speak about uh one of the greatest films of all time, which I recently saw for the first time, which is uh Young Wu's Bullet in the Head.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I have like these filmmakers that I know I love, and I just I have a couple of their canonical films just saved for like a moment in time when I can watch it like in the cinema or something, and there's like a new restoration going around of uh bullet in the head.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, yeah, the time is now.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, there's been I mean the film has been discussed to that, I guess, but what was like still surprising to me in this day is kind of how harrowing it is in terms of violence.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's like really no cathartic element uh in the traditional sense.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like it starts out kind of like presenting the Nietzsche's staging of the action.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you have you see like uh Tony Long, Yaki Shong, and um uh Wei Sli Shi Huang, kind of like uh in these kind of like ornate sequences, and they kind of like the like martial prowess and like the usual like uh Zhong Wu like uh dynamic filmmaking.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_00: But then towards when the film gets to Vietnam, uh basically, well, but I guess everyone knows what bullet in the head is about.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_00: But essentially, you see like these uh three uh men from Hong Kong like have to get out of Hong Kong for different situations, and they are kind of like in the middle of the Vietnam War, and uh which the film has like um questionable politics, might might be a way of putting it.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's basically just like work as mercenaries there there, and uh but at some point they've been kind of like gunning down the Viet Cong uh as well, uh, which is an interesting dynamic.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_00: But just like those sequences when they're like in in the midst of the war, and kind of like there's like usually the people say like Jong Wu's like heroic bloodshed.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think there's nothing heroic in this film, and kind of like a film kind of knows knows it, particularly because there's like the tension between the characters and this like very that which is the classical like melodramatic mel melodramatic arc between the characters, and by the end, it's kind of like fully like operatic, uh at the like my favorite uh Jong Wu moments when you see like the cars on fire and they have like the uh Tony Long has the uh skull of his like deceased friend in the in the war.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_00: You see the skull just on fire on the on the street as uh Wesley uh is like approaching him and they have like this like back and forth about like friendship and what they've been.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like yeah.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think here like the the the the manner like the film goes to to just show like the but perhaps like the moral complications of this character in a different sense kind of makes it to me like even more like god-wrenching when you get there.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_00: So in that sense, to me was like kind of despite being in a film I knew I would like and like almost like a certified uh banger, then the fact that it's not really like a banger, but it has exactly more like the mournfulness and the melancholy nature of the film, I think took me by surprise for how ingrained it is to like the whole experience.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like I never felt like this like audience member that will be just like hooding and hollering, like, yeah, like as perhaps this John like you like the film broad John Wu experience is kind of like assumed to be.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's like no longer no not really the case here.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_05: I love that movie.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_05: And I love and I love John Woo, and I think that's also like uh perfect perfectly characteristic uh case in the John Woo studies because it's just like it's the film that's just like piling one thing on top of another, on top of another, on top of another, and like it basically doesn't make any sense, but like you know, he's one of those, like he's one of the ultimate like um Catholic filmmakers in some way, because like you you just have to believe.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_01: Alright, that was the penultimate uh outskirts uh film podcast episode uh on Nikatsu Ramon Porno because the next episode will be our season finale and it will be about Lino Brochka.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_01: If you have any suggestions, comments, appreciations, please do not hesitate to send us emails on outskirtsfilm magazine at gmail.com and uh we'll see you in two weeks.