ANTIPORNO

In the early seventies the oldest film studio in Japan took drastic step: Nikkatsu turned away from action movies and essentially began producing solely soft-sex films. These roman porno (roughly: romantic porn) seduced the audience with bigger budgets and obligatory nudity (required every ten minutes!) and developed into box office hits. Last year Nikkatsu launched its roman porno reboot and commissioned five directors to reanimate this influential genre. Unsurprisingly, the most radical and best proposal comes from the /slash favorite Sion Sono: Antiporno is a huis clos about the sado-masochist relationship between a young actress and her assistant, a much older woman, carried out in a garishly colored ambient. Sono’s production is as eccentric as ever, letting feelings and bodies go so far off the rails that the walls shake – or are carried off straight away. Overflowing with bodily fluids, Antiporno is an homage to a legendary subgenre, a feminist subversion of it at the same time, and a lusty beating of Japanese gender roles. This is sexploitation of the Sono quality, which means that lasciviousness and intelligence are not mutually exclusive, but rather fertilize one another: the resultant orgasm is holistic, the subsequent happiness lasting.