New Times (L.A.) by Andy Klein
Except for a few slow patches, the movie is compulsively watchable: You keep waiting to see just how sick things are going to get.
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Japan · 1999
Rated R · 1h 37m
Director Akihiko Shiota
Starring Kenji Mizuhashi, Tsugumi, Kôta Kusano, Harumi Inoue
Genre Drama, Romance
Please login to add films to your watchlist.
Satsuki (Tsugumi) and Takuya (Kenji Mizuhashi) are high school students who meet at kendo practice, where they bash one another with wooden swords. They begin an awkward romance, but Takuya soon reveals a masochistic side to his desires. He has been stealing Satsuki's soiled clothing and secretly surveilling her while imagining her subjugation of him. Disgusted, Satsuki rejects him -- but he persists, and she discovers her own pleasure in manipulating and humiliating him.
We hate to say it, but we can't find anywhere to view this film.
New Times (L.A.) by Andy Klein
Except for a few slow patches, the movie is compulsively watchable: You keep waiting to see just how sick things are going to get.
The New York Times by Dana Stevens
There's a little more sex than you'll see on WB, but mostly there's an atmosphere of brooding psychodrama and erotic cruelty that falls somewhere between "Cries and Whispers" and "Say Anything."
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
Good acting and understated filmmaking turn off-putting material into a mildly engrossing drama, if not a particularly compelling one.
This dreamy, languorous farce offers a manageable strawberry-flavored alternative, a mildly kinky Hello Kitty sadomasochism.
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
Surprisingly poignant, thanks to its enduring sense of tenderness.
Best of all is Tsugumi's wild performance.
San Francisco Chronicle by Peter Stack
It's not always clear what this film is driving at, but Shiota makes the weirdness visually arresting.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Sean Axmaker
A disturbing, and disturbingly funny, twist on adolescent love, and Shiota captures the emotional avalanche with understanding.
Newcomer Akihiko Shiota shows talent as a director, but he allows Sasayaki to go on too long.
His voice was the silence of death!
A couple take a trip to Argentina in search of a new beginning, but instead find themselves drifting ever further apart.
Mother knows best!
You Can't Keep a Bad Girl Down
One fateful, adventurous night --- that feels like a dream.
A faded television actor and his stunt double strive to achieve fame in the final years of Hollywood's Golden Age.
Decadence, depravity, and outrageous excess characterize the rise and fall of ambitious dreamers in 1920s Hollywood.
When a young woman, Bella, is reanimated by an eccentric physician, she begins her life anew, exploring the pleasures of the world.
Two rival fixers are hired to work on the same job and must learn to work together.
The film follows the daily life of Hirayama, who works as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo.