Director: Hajime Hashimoto
Cast: Maiko Amano, Noriko Hamada, Rina Sakuragi, Kanji Tsuda, Naoki Kawano, Hideo Sakaki
Running Time: 113 min.
By Paul Bramhall
Spend enough time in the world of Asian cinema, and somewhere along the line, you’re likely to stumble across the Japanese SM (sadomasochism) genre. At least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself for as long as I can remember. Not that I’ve seen that many of them, but people who I know who have tend to believe they stick to the same conventions. Traditional housewife finds herself drawn into a world of being tied up and suspended via various ropes, eventually learns to enjoy the whipping she’s subjected to, and the plots stumble questionably to their ending. At least, that’s what people who’ve watched a fair few of them believe, just to reiterate the point.
One of the most famous examples of the genre is 1974’s Flower and Snake, an adaptation of Oniroku Dan’s novel, about an elderly husband that orders his younger employee to kidnap his reluctant wife, and train her to submit to his desires by breaking her pride via all sorts of perverted nonsense. A distinctly Japanese affair, the movie was so notorious that the title of Flower and Snake wouldn’t stay down for long, and today almost feels like a synonym for rope themed SM movies. From 1985 to 1987 we got 4 more doses of Flower and Snake, all of them standalone tales of debauchery, and featuring Continue reading
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