A nightmarish and culturally subjective odyssey of polymorphous perversion.
There are few films as psychosexually unnerving as MOJU, a visually arresting Japanese art-house classic which illustrates a blind sculptor's darkly sexual "idee fixe", and a young woman's metamorphosis of mind and body. This is erotica of a tenebrous nature rarely explored in films, and will surely rouse reproach in today's politically sensitive milieu for its limning of male-induced female disempowent. Initially a resistant captive, she yields gradually to her oppressor, eventuating with the willful(and eager) ultimate surrender of every aspect of her being.
A disquieting sadomasochistic fever-dream, MOJU is also underscored with violative elements of a strangely touching, almost fragile intimacy which develops between the two key characters...a dynamic of tenderness and firebrand which works well. Iconographically, it's a unique and forceful film, transpiring chiefly within the darkness of an expansive subterrane with black walls which exhibit floor-to-ceiling reliefs in depiction of various body parts. A massive, abstractly sculpted female nude is the central fixture, which serves as a bedstead of sorts. The high contrast of these ghostly-white effigies against the black walls creates a surreal illusion of free-floating entities in the crepuscule of space...it's an appropriately asomatous stage for the bizarre 'mise en scene' at hand, and contributes to the the film's abstruse semblance.
Individuals of offroad aesthetic tastes should enjoy this unexampled and very memorable conception...explore it, and you *will* be affected in a spectrum of ways.
8/10...Recommended.
A disquieting sadomasochistic fever-dream, MOJU is also underscored with violative elements of a strangely touching, almost fragile intimacy which develops between the two key characters...a dynamic of tenderness and firebrand which works well. Iconographically, it's a unique and forceful film, transpiring chiefly within the darkness of an expansive subterrane with black walls which exhibit floor-to-ceiling reliefs in depiction of various body parts. A massive, abstractly sculpted female nude is the central fixture, which serves as a bedstead of sorts. The high contrast of these ghostly-white effigies against the black walls creates a surreal illusion of free-floating entities in the crepuscule of space...it's an appropriately asomatous stage for the bizarre 'mise en scene' at hand, and contributes to the the film's abstruse semblance.
Individuals of offroad aesthetic tastes should enjoy this unexampled and very memorable conception...explore it, and you *will* be affected in a spectrum of ways.
8/10...Recommended.
- EyeAskance
- May 18, 2003