Vai, Vai, Virgem Pela Segunda Vez

This is one of the weirdest and most unique films I've ever seen. It's artsploitation, and like most artsploitation, its art is questionable. In the end, though, I judged that it was more art than exploitation. Others, and probably the majority, would probably feel the opposite. A shy young man follows a group of men who are dragging a woman up to his apartment building's roof. He watches quietly as they rape her. When she awakes in the morning, she asks him to kill her, for she's too unhappy to live. We discover that he himself is suicidal, and that he harbors a deep curiosity and fear around sex, which has lead him to murder before. It does cross the line several times, especially with a series of photos of Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, among which is a picture of Tate's corpse, but there's a lot of interest to grab onto. If nothing else, the stark black and white cinematography is gorgeous, and director Wakamatsu's use of music is masterful. A trip some will definitely want to take, while others, and you probably know it already, should avoid. The director later went on to produce Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses, which, while certainly a good film, is far less daring and compelling as Go Go Second Time Virgin. 9/10.

Koji Wakamtsu's "Go,Go Second Time Virgin" is a classic pinku eiga film.Wakamatsu was raised to be a farmer but made his move to the big city and tried his hand at being a gangster and a convict before he found his true calling as Japan's most notorious experimental movie director,who made over 30 films between 1963 and 1974,many of them too raw and disturbing to be shown in theaters but acclaimed at fine-film festivals."Go,Go Second Time Virgin" tells the story of of Poppo(Mimi Kozakura),a young girl raped(for the second time in her young life)by a gang of street ruffians one August night in Tokyo.Left bleeding on a rooftop,she survives the night and meets Tsukio(Michio Akiyama),a fellow teenager with problems of his own.Together they explore the darker side of life and sex,with Poppo's suicidal obsessions matching similar threads in Tsukio's unsuccessfully published book of poetry.The joy they find in each other inflames their rage at the unjust world around them,and their love engenders a tragic killing spree."Go,Go Second Time Virgin" is a beautifully shot film and the cinematography is brilliant.Most of the film is in gorgeous black-and-white,with a few tinted sequences and a full-color flashback to Tsukio's unfortunate orgy experience.So if you are a fan of Japanese art-house exploitation give this one a look.8 out of 10.

Given that we are dealing with a no budget production shot in a couple of days on top of a roof, the result is astonishing. Koji Wakamatsu has a visual style that outdoes any avantgarde director/photographer with a bigger name. In beautifully shot black and white with some gory color sequences this film takes you on a compelling, nihilistic trip through the claustrophobic existence of two teenagers living on the edge of society. The extreme violence is sometimes lightened by unexpected moments of haunting, morbid poetry. Always true to the characters he has created, Wakamatsu finds beauty where others would only seek for sleaze. This underground masterpiece transcends its humble beginnings and can easily stand comparison with the works of Nagisha Oshima and Seijun Suzuki.

I remember finally getting to see "Assault: Jack the Ripper" after hearing about how brutal it was. Personally i find "Second Time Virgin" more disturbing though. Very minimalist film, almost entirely shot on a grimy rooftop, where a young woman gets raped repeatedly, mostly because after the first rape, she decides to STAY on the roof, to wait for someone to kill her or rape her again! She meets a young, shy man who is harboring an incredibly morbid, violent secret. The two depressed, death-obsessed teens find solace in each other, and form a kind of bond against their brutal surroundings. Effectively filmed in black and white, with some jarring color flashback scenes, this film can really get under the skin. Many people die, and the casual way the deaths are filmed makes for a surreal and unpleasant mood. Worth mentioning too is the sultry, moody jazz soundtrack that is featured. Recommended for all those obsessed with rape and murder.

Go, Go, Second Time Virgin is disturbing and affecting only if one takes it as a dream, or as it subsumed me in the uncomfortable and repetition of a nightmare. You don't follow this story in terms of realism, especially in terms of human behavior, and yet I don't look at these figures on the screen, Poppo (Kozakura) and Tsukio (Akiyama), like they're some unrecognizable beings or aliens from another planet. They're traumatized figures from multiple rapes (one of which the opening of the scene, letting the audience know precisely what this is) and, as we come to find out, a vengeance-soaked mild-mannered killer (ain't they the peachy keen folks), and their bond after Tsukio stands by and sees Poppo raped and doesn't do anything is to talk about how much they want to die.

So, maybe this is also the dream or nightmare of unending and the blackest kind of despair. But it is also shot in this sort of detached Godardian French New Wave approach where things are on such a surreal pace and tone that it feels like every rule is broken in filmmaking so that we can see what makes the traumatized and criminals of the world tick. When these two talk with one another it is all of a randomized piece, like all these violent and bloodied forms make sense even as nothing makes sense.

In a deeper sense, and I may just be spitballing here, the director is looking to portray how minds become wholly discombobulated after traumatic events (as perpetrated or perpetrator), how the only way to communicate and be connected is through a desire for an end to it all (and, eventually, there's unbridled joy in the mania of violence). This apparently ranked in the top 100 list of the New Republic's best Political films ever made some years back, and I can see why that would rank in there. In the sense that is is a harrowing, bitter document of politics, it js about how a destructive force like rapists and a vengeful killer can't and wont stop. And just because one takes it as a jazz-scored chiaroscuro nightmare doesn't make it feel less palpable.

Again, light stuff. I dont think this is something you would even come to unless you know what to expect, but what makes the film so surprising is that the director Wakamatsu, working in the form of Exploitation (and this was released as a "Pink" film or what was close to a Dirty Movie in Japan in those days) uses the wide-screen frame fully and boldly, and the fact that he shot this in four days and got all those shots in the rain is radical by itself. In other words, what at least partially redeems this as something other than just misery porn are things like the sudden song, and how he cast the film and directs Kozakura and especially Akiyama (who strikes me as one of the most chilling Killers in post modern cinema because of his mild demeanor).

Not something I can exactly see myself watching again in a while (one of those excellently made, artistically defiant works), but it is one I'm glad I took a chance on from the Japan section at Kim's.