Naoko holds up a knife with the intention of slashing her wrist. Her husband Yoshio calmly tells her that she may slit it, but not too much. Naoko is an art teacher at a local high school. She is mentally unstable but Yoshio's love for her keeps her grounded. One day Kimiko, a girl in her class, suddenly moves into their house, forcing Naoko into an affair. Her presence disturbs the fragile balance of Naoko's relationship with her husband and starts to fall apart. There is not much Yoshio can do about the situation beyond hoping that, in the end, everything will turn out fine...
DESPITE ALL THAT is the story of a marriage on the mend. Anxiety dwells in everyone's mind, no matter how strong the love. Even in a happy marriage, things often go wrong and become unbearable, but life goes on. "Everything will be okay in the end, depite all that", Yoshio keeps saying to himself. To win back Naoko's love, he is even willing to dress like a woman and become Yoshiko.
DESPITE ALL THAT reveals a new sensibility in matters of gender that distinguish the directors of the younger generation. Whereas in most pink films by the older generation, the relationship between the sexes is fixed, in the films of the younger generation this relationship is negotiable and flexible. And not just in pink film. Imaoka Shinji is the most prolific of the "shichifukujin", successful as a director as well as a scriptwriter. His films focus on daily life experiences, a feature he shares with Sato Toshiki who adapted Imaoka's script into MOANS FROM NEXT DOOR.
Roland Domenig