Meike Mitsuru makes low-budget pink films for the horny old guys who frequent the fleapit theaters in Tokyo’s red light districts - a business that has about as much future as print journalism. But the relatively undemanding nature of the clientele - as long as they see a simulated sex scene every ten minutes or so, they seem to be happy - gives Meike and other pink film directors a fair amount of freedom to experiment - and even do serious work.
One result of this freedom is Meike’s Bitter Sweet, originally a pink film released in October 2004 under the ungainly title The Woman Swept Away By Heavy Infidelity (Noko Furin Torareta Onna). Last year, it was released under its new title at a legitimate theater in Tokyo and one Japanese critic, in the publicity flyer for its release, compared it to the work of Wong Kar-Wai.
Meike’s style, save for unsettling sequences of jump cuts at the beginning and end, is straightforward enough, whereas Wong’s is anything but. Also, Meike doesn’t steam up the screen with the sort of erotic atmospherics that are Wong’s trademark. The settings are the generic streets, hotel rooms, restaurants and flats of urban Japanese life.
What sets the film apart from the pink run - makes the comparisons with Wong not absurd - is the pervasive air of longing, frustration and sadness that is common enough in real life, but rare indeed in porn.
The heroine (Konatsu) is an ordinary (if extraordinarily zaftig) young woman who has ordinary-enough doubts about an approaching marriage. One evening she goes to a small Western-style restaurant with a friend - and falls hard for the cook/owner (Ichikawa Kin), an older man who is accomplished, sophisticated and lonely. She returns after closing time, the owner lets her in - and soon they are having hot sex on the metal kitchen table. The owner, it turns out, is thinking of divorcing his wife (Hayashi Yumika), even though they have two young sons.
The appearance of a passionate young woman in his life brings that decision closer - but doesn’t make it easy. Meanwhile, the distance between him and his wife grows - they still have sex, but it is routine and mechanical. The wife, no fool, can feel the chill - and knows the end is approaching. At the same, she has a secret of her own...
Hayashi Yumika, a star of more than 400 porno movies, going back to 1989, is outstanding as the wronged wife, going beyond the clichés of victimhood to a complex mix of anger, loneliness and need. Finally, while hanging clothes one sunny, windy day, she lets it all go and experiences a moment of joyous transcendence.
Unfortunately Hayashi couldn’t transcend whatever demons where harrowing her own life - she died in June 2005 in mysterious circumstances, only 35 - the AV industry’s answer to Marilyn Monroe. Bitter Sweet is her poignant farewell.