STAR RATINGS EXPLAINED

Classic

Excellent

Good

Fair

Tragic

FILM DETAILS

Certificate

Cast Saori Hara Tomoko Murakami.

Directors Masayuki Miyano.

Screenwriters

Running Time 120 minutes

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Lala Pipo ()

Plot
In Tokyo's red light district six individuals try and make sense of their lives and choices.

Review
Adapted from a novel by Hideo Okuda, this kinky movie interweaves vignettes about six lost souls in red-light Tokyo. Yet, for all the hyper-colourful imagery and stylised structure, this actually casts a melancholic verdict on the breakdown of communication and the devaluation of sex. Indeed, it’s less a study in exploitation than in isolation and the fact we occasionally do distasteful things for justifiable reasons.

If director Masayuki Miyano struggles to integrate Yoshiyuki Morishita’s phallic superhero fantasies, the storylines involving ageing nympho Mari Hamada, chubby porn star Tomoko Murakami and self-loathing writer Sarutobi Minagawa (complete with green Muppet penis) meld neatly.

Verdict
Much of the source text is captured winningly here, but inevitably some elements have been disappointingly rendered.


Reviewer: David Parkinson

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