Sarah_Jayne

It was a bit of a mixed bag. My flat mate insisted I had to watch an old Kurosawa film Yojimbo because I dared mention I hadn't seen it before. I knew of it because I had heard that Fist Full Of Dollars was a direct rip off of it to the point that Kurosawa sued the studio that produced the Clint Eastwood version.


Then he made me watch Tetsuo which is possibly the most messed up film I have seen in a long time. Not for the average cinema goer at all but worth seeing if you like to be grossed out and confused. It is only an hour long which was about as much as I could deal with of it.

Then I brought out one of my faveorite Japanese films - Ai no corrida (In The Realm Of the Senses). It was banned most places in the West when it came out in 1976 because it is explicit both sexually and violently towards the end. It is a story based on the real life 1936 sex scandal that was a big deal in Japan. It is a fine study of sexual obsession. However, please only watch the uncut subtitled version. We made the mistake of buying the dubbed version of the DVD and it takes away too much of the sensuality that sucks you in.

The French film I saw was Drôle de Félix which is sort of a road movie between north and southern France taken by a gay, hiv positive of French-Arab decent. It wasn't bad but not fantastic either. Typical French story telling devices of breaking it up into a series of chapters almost where he meets different people in each one.