Uwakizuma: Chijokuzeme

For a week now, I've been mainlining Hisayasu Sato's filmography, a binge that kicked off on August 15, on the occasion of his birthday. Like a cinematic masochist, I decided the best tribute was to revisit some favorites. But a week later, I'd binged almost 30 films, all the way to his latest, Hidaruma Kaita yo (2023). I couldn't stop. You don't just watch a Sato film-you contract it. This self-flagellation led me back to one of his greatest works, pungent misery of Uwakizuma Chijokuzeme, also known as The Bedroom aka Unfaithful Wife: Shameful Torture (1992).

The plot, if you can call it that, follows Kyoko, played by Kiyomi Itô, who is trapped in a marriage to Mineo (Mineo Sugiura), a man who communicates primarily through sighs. Kyoko finds this so sexless. Her affair with her dead sister's boyfriend, Takeshi (Takeshi Itô), is equally bleak; he's so committed to avoiding intimacy he wears a blindfold so he doesn't have to make eye contact.

Her solution to this void is a part-time gig at a "club" run by Mr. Takano, where the job description is simple: swallow a Halcion pill and become a comatose sex doll for wealthy perverts who find actual conversation too taxing. It's the service industry, stripped to its nihilistic core. The nihilism really kicks in when a bored, unpaid Kyoko decides to stop taking the pill. She figures if she's going to be used as a human scratch-and-sniff, she might as well get a voyeuristic thrill-a front-row seat to her own violation.

Sato films these scenes with a garish, neon-soaked detachment, like a nature documentary about the mating habits of ghosts. The club itself is a womb designed by a misanthrope, a pink and blue-lit purgatory where the only communication is a grope in the dark. Sato famously lifted this bleak premise from Yasunari Kawabata's The House of the Sleeping Beauties, but where Kawabata found melancholy poetry, Sato finds a dead-eyed absurdity.

Sato's visual style is a character in itself: a nervous breakdown viewed through a fisheye lens. The camcorder, as a tool, captures a sex scene where Kyoko and her lover, Takeshi, can only connect by mashing their cameras together, lenses kissing because their owners are incapable of it. And then there's the refrigerator. This isn't just an appliance; it's a recurring character, a recurring gag, and a glowing portal to nowhere. It's like a cold, empty box that promises sustenance but only delivers a vacant hum.

Of course, the inclusion of a cameo by Sato's guest of dishonor, Issei Sagawa-the real-life cannibalistic murderer-is in spectacularly bad taste. His presence is less a performance and more a public health warning, a splash of real-world nihilism that makes the film's fiction feel quaint.

Sato once said that after moving to the city, he saw Tokyo as a grid of disconnected souls, where "people don't talk to one another," and that his films depict communication through "cutaneous sensation in a closed room." The Bedroom is the ultimate expression of that thesis and also one of the weirdest, and no shocker about it, a bit funny too, pinku eiga home movie ever made.

This movie is truly intriguing and genuinely erotic. It also picks up on our worst fears about voyeurism and alienation from filmed images of ourselves. I don't want to spoil the shocking plot, so I won't mention it, but viewers should be aware that, although its not too extreme, this is an example of (albeit high level) Japanese underground film-making, and as such it contains sex scenes which are drwan out for the sake of titillation, but these are bolted to a cohesive and integral thematic framework which makes it all relevant and makes you question the erotic experience of watching such films. Thankfully, it doesn't judge or condemn you for doing so.

This movie contains an "actor" by the name of Issei Sagawa. This man killed and raped a woman in Paris, and then ate her.THIS IS NOT A FALSE ACCUSATION! He was deemed insane in Paris and untreatable, as well as a risk to re offend. They're cheap and didn't want to pay for it, so the shipped him back Japan. Thing is his father's big in the industrial Japanese community( in other words the mafia), and got him off Scott free. Yes you read it correctly, he is a free man, walking the streets of Tokyo as you read this. For the sake of the memory of the innocent woman he killed and butchered(Renee Hartevelt), who he never showed any remorse or sadness do not ever rent this movie.

Having lived in Tokyo for almost two years,i can confirm my suspicions that Sato is one of the most Japanese directors working today.His films could not be made anywhere else by anyone else.His unwavering,logical dissection of a central theme (usually something to do with psychosis and obsession) spiralling towards a nihilistic, doomed (and romantic) ending is in keeping with a dark strain that's been in Japanese culture since it's inception.Xenophobic film watchers who think this is a scary mirror of modern Japanese society should however,not take it so seriously.THE BEDROOM is a very hard film to write about.It has no asides.All the usual cinematic bull**** has been lyposucked away leaving a economic, tight and intense story that goes from A to B swiftly and leaves the imprint of a film behind without actually developing fully.But it doesn't need to.It's like a song that never repeats that riff you like so much enough to fully satisfy you,so you listen again.And (if his whole back catalogue was available in English) i would immediately put on another Sato movie after this.They are as obsessive and addictive as his characters.Unredeeming,anti-social and seriously well-made.One day,some film-maker will push forward Sato as an influence and maybe people will take notice.But until then,his small fan base will watch them in darkened rooms in dark cities trying to replicate a fever dream.

This is a very strange & at times frightening erotic love story. If you are turned off on Amputation scenes, DO NOT see this. But for those who are not , you will be caught up in its eroticism I saw this over a year ago, so cannot remember all the details, except that I was enthralled. Brilliant acting by a talented good looking cast & very well made. as always My rating is ***1/2 Jay Harris