If it appears a far cry from the dull workings of porn movies and their blank lovemaking, In the Realm of the Senses is also literally a porn film. Kichi becomes Sada in an exchange that suggests the fusion of two inseparable bodies and foreshadows the gesture of a woman who cuts off her lover’s penis to better possess it forever. When Sada describes the scene to Kichi, he asks her to beat him.
When separated, the lovers make others take the place of the missing Other. She then sits astride him, imagining that he is Kichi. In turn, suffering alongside the professor, Sada asks him to beat her. But Kichi has stayed at home, so frustrated that he ends up taking the mistress of the inn as violently as he had Sada. Once she is on the train, Sada runs to the toilet to smell Kichi’s kimono while she imagines him running next to the tracks, naked in a women’s kimono. The mistress of the inn moves away slowly. His jealousy piqued by imagining her with someone else, Kichi takes her violently. To earn her living, she is forced to prostitute herself to an old professor. In front of her boss, Sada says that she must go away for 24 hours. They have just celebrated their honeymoon night in another inn. The genuine acceleration occurs when the two lovers return to Kichi’s house. But the true interest stems from the crescendo, an explosion of the senses unique in the history of cinema. The end of the film gives off a sense of bewilderment, as if Oshima had also been sapped of energy. Kichi decides to put his head inside Sada: “It is so good, so soft”. I would have wanted you to enter into me,” says Sada. Sada forces him to make love to an elderly geisha who reminds him of his mother’s dead body. Ridden, strangled, threatened by Sada, Kichi fades and weakens. From then on, the film becomes the story of a battle against exhaust-ion. “Pissing is the only rest that it gets,” remarks Kichi, while Sada, whose organ sucks in and spices the food destined to him, warns him that she will turn him into a “skeleton”. At first, Sada is passive, submissive (Kichi first feels desire for her as he watches her scrub the floor of the inn), but she rapidly takes hold of the reigns and orders Kichi’s manhood to be the ever-rising sun. If the film was directed by a man, Oshima, its heroine is a woman. Her pleasure is also an expression of suffering, as she is submerged by the realm of the senses. A dream scene shows Sada naked on empty bleachers, Kichi and a small girl circling her whilst repeating the same song: “Ready? Not yet.” Ready for what, if not death? In the Realm of the Senses follows this sensual and fatal battle between two bodies, a crescendo of bouts leading to an ultimate face-off. To continue the bullfighting metaphor, this is a fight to the death in the arena before the final blow. Their sexuality is so frenetic as to feed off others: geishas, servants, inn keepers are all swept into their carnal vortex. Make love not war: in a repressive, politicised Japan, Sada and Kichi’s choice causes them to be marginalized, although they do not seem to notice.
The lovers venture outside but also make love there, turning the world into a gigantic bedroom. For the relationship between Sada and Kichi is also a matter of love, an intense, voracious love that makes them forget about the rest of the world. The Japanese title is not devoid of interest either: the bullfight of love. Sense, sensuality: a title that keeps its promises. It begins gently before taking hold of you and locking you into the maddening spiral of physical love. The film resembles one of those dreams that leaves only a confused trace. How do we get to this decapitated phallus? In general, even those who have seen In the Realm of the Senses are unable to tell you. An incredible, enigmatic gesture that inspired several films, including Nagisa Oshima’s 1976 opus which provoked one of the biggest scandals in cinema history. A bloody member that a certain Abe Sada was found carrying through the streets of Tokyo one day in 1936 before being arrested by the police. In general, even people who haven’t seen the film know how it ends: Sada slices off Kichi’s penis.