Danchizuma: Hirusagari no jôji

The naïve, beguilingly beautiful, increasingly frustrated wife (Kazuko Shirakawa) of an insensitive white-collar stiff is coerced into prostitution, and her increasingly erotic awakenings are teasingly exposed in Shogoro Nishimura's voyeuristic extramarital shunt-serenade Apartment Wife: Affair in the Afternoon. Sensual, rather than garishly explicit, this lusty Nikkatsu Roman Porno is, perhaps, more of a saucy melodrama than many of the more outré examples of this rewardingly perverse genre. While relatively tame, I still very much enjoyed the film, as the charming lead Kazuko Shirakawa is both sympathetic, sweet, and distractingly lovely! The HD presentation is a most welcome one, film transfer is sharp, with appetising flesh-tones, and natural-looking exteriors. The splendidly seedy Pinky trope of virtuous wife/girlfriend forced into multitudinous levels of degradation is a familiar one, frequently taking more sadistic tangents than seen in western smut. My own preference is for the nastier 'Assault : Jack the Ripper' type, Apartment Wife: Affair in the Afternoon is certainly not without zesty incident!