Dan Oniroku gensaku: Jogakusei

After I watched "Girl Student" (this is the official English DVD title of this movie) and the end credits start rolling, the first thing that I've thought was where the director Hiroyuki Kawasaki missed the point and went wrong? From the beginning this movie had a great potential, but towards the end it was pretty disappointing actually. It wasn't a bad movie. It was disappointing because there could be much more things and ideas in this film that could have been used to make it better, but it wasn't. But there was a simple reason for that - "Girl Student" is an film adaptation of one of the most famous SM writers Oniroku Dan's novella "Jogakusei". Oniroku Dan is an Japanese SM novelist that has been called "the most celebrated writer of popular SM novels in Japan". Many of his stories have been filmed. Probably the most famous Oniroku Dan's novel is "Hana to hebi" ("Flower and Snake"). This is the work which made him famous. The first "Hana to hebi" movie based on Oniroku Dan's novel, was filmed back in 1974 and not so long time ago, in 2004, Takashi Ishii filmed newer version of "Hana to hebi". Second part of "Flower and Snake" followed in 2005. So, as in other Oniroku Dan's novels, the main "Girl Student" subject is SM.

The story of "Girl Student" starts in the bar, where two men are sitting and waiting for a girl. One of them was an talented AV film director, other is a popular SM novelist. They haven't seen each other for a three years. The film director faded into obscurity after the accident which blocked his way to success - his wife was acting in his AV movies, so one day he couldn't bear it anymore and he run away with his wife right from the movie set. After all these years the film director decided to return to this business to earn money, because one rich boss of the big property company want to film a movie that is based on his favourite SM book titled "Female Slave", which was written by the novelist who is sitting in the bar with the film director. The girl they are waiting is the actress of the movie. When the girl arrives, the director introduces her as 19 years old student of music university. She needs a big sum of money (5 million yen), because of her family business, which is nearly closed because of owing a lot of money. The next day all three of them arrives at the house of the boss who finance movie to show him the actress. He likes her very much and he invites them all to a table to celebrate it. During the conversation at the table the actress only now knows, that this will be an AV movie. She says that she've never thought about doing such thing and rejects the role, but the director of the movie and the boss strip her and throw the girl at the cell. The boss tells her that before the movie will be finished, she'll have to live in the cell and be his slave. Meanwhile the other actor arrives at this apartment - it's a good looking young guy. After he've been told to take away all of his clothes, they lock him up in the cellar with the actress girl. Two actors prisoners have been told that now they have to build up their relationship. To let them obey their masters they will be treated as a cat or a dog. That's where the main SM fun starts. To reach this moment Hiroyuki Kawasaki needed more than a half time of total runtime of this film, but I can't say that it was wasted.

So what are the good and the bad things about "Girl Student"? Well there is a plenty of good things actually! First of all interesting storyline - it holds you up in attention all the time. Second thing is the actors. Especially the appearance of Shô Nishino (she plays the actress-prisoner girl) in this movie. Her role is to be kind and shy and she've done it perfectly! Also Kiichirô Wakayama (he was playing a novelist) had done a pretty good work with his character. The novelist in this movie is kind of a mysterious character - he seemed to be a nice person almost whole movie, but viewers feels the whole time that it isn't the real face of the character and somewhere in the end he'll show his real face. The other actors also was pretty good. Talking about the SM scenes - there aren't many of them (although the main subject of the "Girl Student" is SM). There are few SM scenes, but I would say that they are more erotic, typical scenes like in most of "pinku" movies. But this film has many other good things that are related to SM. For example how the two actors-prisoners are forced to surrender their dignities - they are treated like an animals, thrown naked in the cell without toilet or any other thing and they're forced to make love to each other. The only disappointing thing was the ending. I won't spoil it, but it was kinda disappointment to me. But as I've said before - it could have been better if it wouldn't be a film adaptation. I don't think that the director Hiroyuki Kawasaki or the screenplay writer Kôsuke Komatsu had done something wrong. I believe that they strictly followed Oniroku Dan's novel and that's why the ending was dull...

P.S. - totally unnecessary thing in "Girl Student" DVD was an replacement in English subtitles of original character names by such names as Justin, Sally, Mr Sam, John, so instead of Yoshimoto we get Justin, instead of Morita-san we get Mr Sam and so on. Totally unnecessary thing in my opinion.

A rich man wants to create an S&M film for his own entertainment. He hires an author and director. They hire an actress who it turns out didn't know it was an S&M or sex film and they keep her under duress & locked up. And they hire an actor who doesn't know much more than the actress. Then they lock up both the actor & actress in a cell in the rich man's dungeon celler.

First half of movie is just building toward the actual making of the fictional S&M movie. Takes way too long as it's doing basically nothing until then. The script doesn't have much too it so they fill the time with bits of nothing such as several second still shots of the actress's back while sitting on the floor, a wristcuff hanging on the dungeon cell door or the blank stare of the author occasionally hearing his thoughts thru the blank stare. There's a camera filming the fictional movie but nobody ever operates it and The camera is outside looking thru bars of the cell so wouldn't capture much in reality. Also they're supposed to be making an sadomasochism film with torture but it's 99% sex. In fact nearly all what would qualify as S&M is before any (fictional) scene they act out. There is nudity and sex scenes but nothing explicit. Also the sex always looks very fake. Not sure if bad acting or the (real) director was asleep.

When they're filming the fictional film what we're seeing often switches very abruptly at times between live scenes in the cell & the author's story being played out in his head. It gets confusing at times.

I can't tell you anything they got right in this movie. There really was only about 35 minutes of story. The rest could have been edited out. This movie doesn't really make a lot of sense either. Much better films than this one.