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.

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.

Girl, unwilling, borne upstairs on shoulders of rampant youth. Rooftop rape. Close ups. Porcelain white face melts to blue reminiscence. Seashore rape. Need for death, need to be killed. And so it goes, still camera and long takes, repetitious dialogue and pretentious poetry, the slow unfolding of terminal youth, sorry isolated kids playing out sex and death on what might as well be the roof of the world. Referred to in the credits simply as girl and boy, Poppio and Tsukio find their obsessions entwine, find tenderness amidst cruelty but best of all for the viewer find expression as remarkably credible characters. Films dealing with the darker side of youth seem eternally prone to sensationalism and that is present here, but for all the exploitation gears that this film moves through the characters are authentic, their inescapable thoughts, the bindings of determination, of society, of their own desperation, all is real, bleak to a wrenching degree but always unsettlingly real. Both leads are outstanding, Mimi Kozakura harrowing in her determination for release, Michio Akiyama dead eyed and impassive, at first a strange presence he slowly endears himself through chemistry before the film shifts to darkest realms. Sublime largely black and white cinematography from Hideo Itoh stylises but also brings out every detail in bright relief, perfect complement to the generally sedate shooting style. Similarly apt is the score from Meikyu Sekai, heavy on subdued guitar, sweetly drawing out deep sadness in gentle moments. Director Koji Wakamatsu demonstrates mastery of his craft, exquisitely binding exploitation to art-house treatment, switching to colour for memory or grisly violence and deploying once or twice hand-held camera for shocking style as he pulls his actors inexorably to climax. The film does slip into the realms of the unnecessary in using photographs of Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, underlining the climatic violence and its riff on the then all over the papers Tate/Lo Bianco murders but it felt somewhat out of place to me. The dialogue also at times perhaps goes beyond its intent, perhaps a little too arch at times, and the final moment is a little unsubtle, driving home in bleakly humorous fashion a message that could just have well have been left implicit. But the overall effect is hardly abated by these small slips, so potent is the ambiance. Not a film for everyone that's for damn sure, but to those that value the stranger side of serious cinema this is a must see. 9/10. Oh and in case you're wondering, there's tits and bloodshed for those that couldn't give a rats ass about serious cinema. So check it out, punk.

Ive seen alot of films from Japan and other countries. But this has got to be one of the most bizare,yet interesting films that has come out of japan in recent years. Its like a teen angst film gone awry. unlike American teen angst films were you just have a bunch of dialog and crying this one has action and visual imagery that follows the characters though out the whole film the combination of both color and black and white film is a rare treat indeed.

Not an easy and an art movie, Koji Wakamatsu's „Go-Go Second Time Virgin' won't let you without a second see, because it's just amazing. But that's not all. There is a natural tendency of considering this movie as a far-eastern one and especially as a '60's -'70's one. More than that (can you imagine) „Go-Go Second Time Virgin' is a strange and beautiful combination Bunuel-Resnais-Antonioni in a Japanese manner. It is true that the movie is violent, really violent, but physical violence is a indispensable element in „Go-Go Second Time Virgin', especially when the same violence is not being followed for any single moment by Wakamatsu. The TITLE signifies purity, and in the beginning, a 17 years old girl is gang raped on a roof, while a boy is watching without participating. The boy remains there, right next to the raped girl till the morning, 8th of August, a warm and sunny one. The girl gets up and, even though she wasn't a virgin, she still bleeded after the rape. It was the second time she was raped, first time it happened on a beach, and from B/W, the image is now cyan. She bleeded for the second time, because she didn't lose her innocence, and directly comes the title, „Go-Go Second Time Virgin'. For the same reason the movie is „build' on and around a ROOF, with many WHITE SHEETS in the 8th of August morning scene. The girl is sad and she wants to die, and the boy, an anonymous poet, pretends that he does not understand why. We go down the roof in a flat where the image turns for the last time from B/W (not a coincidence) into colour, this time, and there is a murder scene with four bodies and a lot of blood. The victims have sexually molested the boy and he killed them for being „pigs' and that's how ABUSE is introduced. From this moment 'till the end, the movie turns into a not losing purity dilemma, and the climax is the night i'm-gonna-kill-you-dance, all WHITE SHEETS are gone and a misty morning on the 9th of August. As for the set, the image and the shot, Tarkovsky's and Kieslowskyi's fans would be delighted seeing „Go-Go Second Time Virgin' a '65 minutes everyday Masterpiece about trying, keeping and fighting for your own purity. The most violent non-violent film I've ever seen, simply BEAUTIFUL (8/10).