Pleasures of the Flesh (Etsuraku) (1965)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Eric B

  
  Boy, does this film work hard to set up its premise. Let's see...Atsushi is a teacher is secretly in love with Shoko, a young woman whom he formerly tutored. He finds out she was molested as a child, and murders the offender by pushing him off a train. A government worker who is… More
  Boy, does this film work hard to set up its premise. Let's see...Atsushi is a teacher is secretly in love with Shoko, a young woman whom he formerly tutored. He finds out she was molested as a child, and murders the offender by pushing him off a train. A government worker who is destined for prison witnesses the crime, seeks out Atsushi and recruits him to temporarily hold 30 million yen which he has embezzled. He realizes Atsushi is obligated to help him, or risk having the murder exposed. Then Shoko marries someone else, and distraught Atsushi decides to nihilistically spend the money within a year and then kill himself before the embezzler returns from jail. He moves to an elegant new apartment, and hires a prostitute at an extravagant monthly salary to be his full-time lover. It's no coincidence that she resembles Shoko. Most of this occurs within the first 15 minutes! And of course, Atsushi is bound to regret his reckless plan. "Pleasures of the Flesh" is more accessible than other Nagisa Oshima works of the period -- it's in widescreen color and, despite some abstract electronic bits (similar to Antonioni's "Red Desert," released the same year?), the score is more traditional and even includes vocal songs. There is some dreamy use of double images and a few slow-motion passages, but the filmmaking is otherwise quite mainstream. What's lacking here are the usual resonances with Japan's contemporary culture. Instead of the timely youth-rebellion content of earlier Oshima movies, "Pleasures of the Flesh" is more of a standard film noir. Not so distinctly personal. And don't be misled by the lurid title: There is little sexual content to enjoy here.

• Walter M

  
  In "Pleasures of the Flesh," Wakizaka(Katsuo Nakamura) does a favor for the family of Shoko(Mariko Kaga), the woman he tutors and secretly harbors an immense crush for, by killing the man who molested her as a child and now threatens to expose her. Since one bad turn… More
  In "Pleasures of the Flesh," Wakizaka(Katsuo Nakamura) does a favor for the family of Shoko(Mariko Kaga), the woman he tutors and secretly harbors an immense crush for, by killing the man who molested her as a child and now threatens to expose her. Since one bad turn deserves another, Hayami approaches him with keeping 30 million yen that he had embezzled from public funds until he gets out of jail in five years' time in return for not informing on him to the police. Four years later, Shoko gets married and Wakizaka says to hell with it and decides to spend the 30 million yen over the the next year. After which, he will kill himself, insuring Shoko's secret is safe. To start, he will spend the money on women. "Pleasures of the Flesh" gets off to a great start but calms down, paralleling Wakizaka's interest in living a life of quiet domesticity over sleeping with as many women as possible. Still, the movie is perverse enough to merit interest, along with excellent photography and a particularly ironic ending. As bad as he may appear on the surface, Wakizaka also hallucinates Shoko and Hayami from time to time which proves the existence of a guilty conscience. But Shoko is the only purely good person in this world which explains Wakizaka's obsession with her. (Originally reviewed in the blog section on April 5, 2009.)