The Pornographers

Imamura is like a rebellious pupil who rejects Ozu's idealism & Mizoguchi's moralism while building on their work. His aggressive experimentalism seems like an extension of this frustration & forms a fractured multilayered expression. A truly repugnant yet almost prophetically poignant examination of a family on the fringes of a rapidly changing society. Constantly offsets you with its pointed dynamic between realism & absurdity, institution & taboo. It's genius but perhaps a bit too much of it.

A film about a pedophile pornographer battling a fish for the moral fate of a Japanese family - which is an automatic winner in my book. It's no surprise that Imamura's cinematography is fascinating. But what truly excels is the script, wonderfully detailed with layers of thematic repetition and contradiction, where characters find the correct balance between very real - and very perverse.

Visually and thematically I found this to be extremely interesting, to say the least, but the narrative was stale and had trouble holding my attention.

This was a highly interesting character study that was filled with great acting, interesting editing and cinematography. It kind of fell apart at the end but everything that led up to it was amazing.

gross

An oddball domestic comedy in which Imamura delights in the lowlifes and scumbags who defy traditional Japanese repression. We're able to sympathize with the pimping, loan-sharking, mob-affiliated pornographer because he genuinely believes his work is social charity. The cinematography makes great use of architecture, reflecting the film's voyeuristic elements.

Felt like a Japanese version of an Arthur Miller play. The fascinating (and at times, utterly despicable) characters really made the film. Great depiction of the philosophy and consequences of sexuality in Japan.

I had a hard time getting into it. It had a lot of clever and innovative stuff happening, but the story just wasn't that interesting. It didn't pull me in at all. I felt the same way about another Imamura film, The Eel, although I'd have to say this one was considerably better.