Film description

Kyoko - actress, model, star, looks a little bored closed in her fantastically colorful apartment. She plays with her phone and puts on a series of new, skimp outfits. She delivers passionate monologues, insults her assistant and subjects her to all sorts of humiliations. Is this the reality or is she just practicing for a role? Who is harassing whom, who is spying on whom? And where did the erotic film screened on the wall come from?

Sono mixes the orders of reality and misleads the viewers, inviting them for a perverse game with, seemingly predictable, generic form. The colorful, visually polished spectacle hides many a surprise (such as references to other works of the director, including his paintings, but also to one of his earlier films "I am Keiko," in which he used similar aesthetic solutions). The outcome is closer to David Lynch's films than to erotic cinema, and the narrations designed by Sono lead the audience in unexpected directions.

The film was made as a part of the project reactivating the cult Nikkatsu cycle - a popular series from the 70s and 80s, "Roman porno," presenting erotic films made by the most avaunt-guard artists of the time. Made to keep the studio going during an attendance crisis, it became a stepping stone for many artists for whom the doors of big producers were closed, as well as a cultural phenomenon, which influenced many later artists. The approaching 45th anniversary of the series, encouraged the studio to invite Sion Sono, Hideo Nakata, Akihiko Shiota, Kazuya Shiraishi and Isao Yukisada to work with them. Nikkatsu wants to return to high-quality erotics – at a time when sex is an easily accessible commodity, the producers want to aim high and find a way to show sexuality in an ambitious, extravagant way.

Jagoda Murczyńska