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A lot of fun.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

I would say acting is fine and camera work is fine and everything but....I just do not really feel that the situation that is set up in the start is fully used. There could have been so many situations that could have been set up to make it more interesting.After the set up of the plot in the movie I found it very easy to see how the movie would end and I did not not really find the travel to the end emotional interesting or exploring in any way.I would say there are lots of great Japanese movies out there. You can find better than this one.

Nagisa Oshima's Pleasures of the Flesh is the first film produced by his first studio, Sozosha, after he parted ways with Shochiku in order to make provocative films, even though there's nothing in this movie that's more radical than his earlier works, which were equally as aggressive. Similarly, this film is often classified as a pinku movie, but it really isn't (for starters, there is no nudity), so I think that classification comes strictly based on its title. Also, for some reason it's listed as a comedy on several sites, despite being anything but.The movie presents a line-up of low-lives, immoral characters and all- around unpleasant people typical for Oshima's social realist dramas. It's a dark tale of lost love, obsession, cruel ironic twists, aimless lives and a shallow, materialistic society whose members are doomed from the start. The main character is a major douche-bag, but it's not like the people around him are any better. There's a jazzy undertone reminiscent of the films of Seijun Suzuki and Kiju Yoshida, and Mariko Kaga, one of the best '60s Japanese actresses, appears as the female lead. All in all, pretty good, but the story's potential is greater than its realization. Also, the colors are really washed up, which particularly ruins the night scenes.

For a movie called 'Pleasures of the Flesh' this was actually a fairly tame time. Specifically, if you're considering that you'll see some of that 'Wow-wa-wee-wa!' sexuality that Oshima made so notorious with In the Realm of the Senses you may just be outright disappointed. This story comes more by way of a precursor to a 'Leaving Las Vegas' where it's about a guy who goes on a path of self-destruction after being blackmailed into holding on to thirty million dollars by a man who saw our protagonist (Ashima) kill another man on a train. A lot of this plot doesn't really need to be explained - or rather, the movie does a helluva job explaining it to us again and again when not really necessary - and the main thrust is about a kind of guilt and shame filled trek into despair. Cheery, of course.I don't know if Oshima's direction had quite gotten to the point it had in just the next few films he would make - i.e. Violence at Noon, Sing a Song of Sex, and the best of them Japanese Summer: Double Suicide - where he could make a compelling plot with a wild and idiosyncratic vision with the camera (the man simply shoots wide-shots and close-ups like no one else, somehow with him people are farther away and when close you can see the whites of their eyes). Here, he's got a solid premise, and some fine acting from his lead and a couple of supporting players, but has too much explanation of things going on and not enough, frankly, titillation. We see the character hand off money, lots of it, recklessly (which is good to see) for the women he acquires, the most interesting being a wife who is sleeping with him so he can support his husband and children (when he confronts Ashima it's really quite a tense scene, mostly for how seemingly nice or mean he could be in the same breath).But at the same time we only see a little of how he really soaks up this 'pleasure' (albeit maybe the the title of the book this is based on, Pleasures in a Coffin, could have been an indicator for the film-noir-ish nihilism on display). A lot of the film is spent with the character lamenting his lost love, a once pupil of his who married someone else (and was part of the cause of this whole thing to begin with), and being a self-destructive ass around those he makes love to; one memorable scene has him on a beach in a situation with a woman where no one comes out well, and yet brings a marriage. You know, the kind of marriage that actually has a 'divorce-by' date included.The cinematography in color brings out (oddly enough) the melancholy state of things, and the paranoia that builds in the third act is convincing and palpable. If only there was a little more focus, or just a stronger sense of the degradation of the character past the carelessness of the money (maybe more dangerous-type scenes like a gangster threatening one of his women with acid to the face), it could have been something special. As it is, Pleasures of the Flesh is more like a 'nice' (I hate to use that word but it is) indicator of the darker recessed the filmmaker would go into just in a year or so.

What looks first like a thriller (after the murder of a man who raped one of his students, a young teacher finds himself blackmailed into hiding a huge some of money) turns into an exploration of greed and sexual exploitation by one of the less politically correct Japanese directors, Nagisa Oshima, as the hero succumbs to his baser impulses and decides to spend the money on indulging his every (often sensual) impulse - planning to commit suicide when the cash runs out. "Pleasures of the Flesh" sees Oshima first embrace of the themes of sexuality, sadism and obsession that characterize his later works. I see "Pleasures of the Flesh" as the turning point in Oshima's career, a cross between his early films, like "The Sun's Burial" or "A Cruel Story of Youth" with young criminals who exploit each other for money and enact transgressive fantasies, or "Night and Fog in Japan" with its political plot, and later films, like the famous "Realm of the Senses", and their sadomasochist tales of sex and death. Oshima is obviously already at work pushing the limits of what can be shown on screen and what can be said on the power of sex and money, on the perversion of love and capitalism. It is one of the most pessimistic works from the director. Everything is corrupt : the young girl the hero falls for (and kills for) proves to be not so innocent in the end, sex (which is a way to humiliate people), love (which only leads to frustration and guilt), money (a delusion), society (dominating and repressive). As "Pleasures of the Flesh" seems to embody most of Oshima's favorite themes, I would recommend it, but don't expect a "likeable" film with "likeable" characters. But after all, this is all too typical of Oshima's manner ! Has he ever filmed romantic stories and sweet people ?