Sada Abe

I love the story of Sada Abe and Kichizo Ishida as much as I hate Twilight. I can't believe something so perfectly grotesque, erotic, sick, romantic and terrible actually happened. Their personalities and relationship and the way it all went is too mysterious and wild to even deal with. They were insane.

Last night I FINALLY got to watch Ai No Corrida (English title: In the Realm of the Senses), the 1970s art film by Nagisa Oshima that was inspired by the affair. I was scared to watch it because I love the story so much often when movies are based on interesting people and affairs, they water things down for no reason and everything gets trite and pointless (have you seen Bright Star? Barf Star) and Abe and Ishida are quite a lot to handle. But this movie is so good. So beautiful and creepy and sexy and upsetting. This film was widely edited and banned upon release. Unsimulated sex acts are filmed incredibly close up and in detail, plus handfuls of various taboos shown and mentioned. I've never seen a more explicit movie and I found the last scenes hard to watch. But I absolutely loved this beautiful, beautiful film. Has anyone else seen it? What did you think?

P.S. Watch out! You can't watch the original version in Japan. It's crazy censored which is like putting big ugly holes in the entire mood and theme of the film. So lame. The uncut version is available in the US and many other countries, and you can find it online like I did.