Funny and Provocative - I Am an S+M Writer

Again, another long delay. Well, let's get right to it, shall we? I have been seeing a lot of films, especially because of the cold weather on the East Coast. Here we have an excellent film, Ryuichi Hikori's I Am an S+M Writer, a scathing and hilarious look at a battle between the sexes, a husband who writes lurid fiction and his wife, who will not tolerate the means that he goes to get his creative stimulation. The husband, Kurosaki (played by Ren Osugi), is a fiction writer who has only found success by writing sado-masochist fiction. He has an assistant, Kawada (Jun Murakami) who provides creative stimulation by hiring models who are tied up and seduced in front of Kurosaki. They describe in crude detail what is happening, and Kurosaki, in a fire of creativity, writes down the graphic sex. On one particular occasion, Kurosaki's wife (Yoko Hoshi) comes home to find them engaged in the "creative process" -- she wordlessly draws close the sliding doors to the outside around them, and leaves. Later at dinner, she calls him a pervert, and denies him access to sleep together, moving into a different room. One day she brings home a man, an English language professor from the west, and shamelessly flirts with him in front of Kurosaki. He is not amused, but does not show any real anger or jealously. His wife eventually turns to Kawada, seducing him and having sex at a hotel. Kurosaki observes the change in her behavior and sees a glow in her that can only come from making love, and correctly concludes that she is having an affair. Kawada confesses to Kurosaki that it is with him that she is seeing. Kurosaki, after showing a brief display of anger, decides to turn it around and use their affair as material for a novel, and asks Kawada to describe the intercourse in intimate detail. Kurosaki becomes absorbed, writing page after page, until he completes what he feels is his masterwork. He invites his neglected wife, Kawada, and the English professor to a bar where he boasts about his accomplishment. But his wife is no longer interested, and has made plans to leave him. Kawada and the professor fight, leaving Kawada with a bloody nose. In a last ditch attempt to save their marriage, Kurosaki attempts to make love to his wife, but he can not sustain the fervor. His wife eventually leaves him, but not before revealing that she has been an avid reader of erotic fiction, and had hoped that she could have been the one tied up as the model for her husband's musings. She meets Kawada one last time at a hotel for one last, intense tryst. Kurosaki dedicated the novel to her but fails to get it published, having second thoughts.

While it is a portrait of a crumbling marriage, I Am an S+M Writer is a very funny film, being outrageous and yet showing great humor and discretion, without going overboard. Let's face it, there are things that inhabit Japanese culture that are considered decadent or indecent here in the States. Bondage exists, but in Japanese culture and the arts one can find images dealing with women being tied up in various states as a sign of subordination and/or sexual liberation. In the 70's the Japanese film industry was making a lot of money from the Roman Porno genre, softcore sex films that was exploitative and arousing. I have not seen any of those films, but it is clear while watching this film that it is playing around with the master/slave relationship of bondage, feminist reaction and independence, and a basic notion of a creative person losing his sexual potency, finding his only arousal in his work. It is part of why the marriage fell apart -- that Kurosaki and his wife could no longer be a loving couple, and that his work superceded her in his world. Yoko Hoshi does a great job as the author's wife; being a sensible classy woman, while being exquisite and sexually provocative. Hiroki does an excellent job at keeping things on an even keel, a fine directing effort. Recommended!