In the Realm of the Senses (1976)
Directed by Nagisa Ôshima

Notorious for its unsimulated sex scenes, Nagisa Ôshima’s In the Realm of the Senses is no more controversial than what I’ve been seeing in HBO’s Euphoria. Which is to say that whatever prudish sensibilities I possess are largely a matter of whether or not I feel like what I’m seeing is exploitative or art. This leans to the latter. The film details the all-encompassing and torrid love affair between Sada (Eiko Matsuda), a lowly house servant, and a married house master Kichizo (Tatsutya Fuji). The two embark on a sexual odyssey, retreating from their domestic setting to a hovel of a room, purely to fuck. The numbers these guys put in make mine look absolutely bush league. The stakes keep getting higher between the two, as they isolate themselves entirely from the moving world, bridging the gap between cathexis to a kind of singular, nymphomaniacal love. Their brief forays apart yield their own sexual experiences, but these prove to be hollow exercises. These moments provide Ôshima’s film with some vital text, particularly a sequence where Kichizo wanders around Tokyo as children carrying Japanese flags run amok. He avoids eye-contact, as if to conceal a shame. The passions, the unflinching confidence he possesses with Sada crumbles under the weight of imperialist Japan; crushed under the norms of civilized society. But the bulk of this film is in how Sada and Kichizo’s lovemaking provides them a singular escape from the torrent of despair that hovers over an entire civilization. Ôshima’s film examines how love and sex can prove to be the last refuge of the damned. It’s the kind of film that I suspect could be easily ridiculed, but the more I consider it, the more it strikes me as a masterwork on living a life true to yourself.