Summary
The first of a new series of films celebrating 50 years of Nikkatsu’s pink films demonstrates Daigo Matsui’s intimate knowledge of couples while remaining tied to the form’s erotic focus.
Rather than sweep the rich history of pinku films under the rug, or Roman pornos as they are sometimes called, Japan has embraced their form again over the last decade. Nikkatsu celebrated the 45th anniversary of these films by commissioning a series of features by folks like Isao Yukisada and Akihiko Shiota. For the 50th anniversary, three new films were launched in tribute.
Daigu Matsui’s entry is HAND (手), and alongside new works from Koji Shiraishi and Shusuke Kaneko, forms part of the Roman Porno Now line launched in July 2022. Based on Nao-Cola Yamazaki’s novel, it introduces us to the 25-year-old Sawako (Akari Fukunaga), who has a deep fascination with older men. Partly influenced by her father’s presence, she goes so far as to scrapbook encounters of men she spots.
When she meets and falls for Mori (Daichi Kaneko), a former coworker, they begin an intensely physical relationship. Sawako begins to experience a new lease on life, along with a self-assuredness in her everyday interactions.
The rules of the previous wave of Nikkatsu films gave filmmakers a framework: have a simulated sex scene approximately every ten minutes, be under 80 minutes, and shot in under a week. This is clearly not the case here, as Matsui has a much broader canvas to paint his exploration of a relationship through the lens of sex and physicality.
Yet the one rule Matsui does stick to is the regularity of the eroticism. Having made a career of understanding the unspoken and observational moments in relationships, he takes HAND‘s sex scenes right up to the edge of explicit in order to show us those unguarded conversations couples have in various states of undress.
That said, the prurient nature of the form does mean that we get the occasional random sex scene with another couple entirely, namely Sawako’s sister Rika and her boyfriend, and that just feels a bit excessive. It’s also all tinged with just a shadow of fatalism, almost as if we know how it’s all going to end. In this sense, it has something in common with the ‘sex and death’ films of the Japanese New Wave or more recently, Haruhiko Arai’s It Feels So Good.
HAND is a film that both transcends its Nikkatsu origins while remaining firmly tied to them. At times deeply intimate and sensual, reflecting its conventions back through a kind of female gaze. Yet it always feels conscious of its own form, with several threads – not least of which Sawako’s relationship with her now ailing father – ultimately lost in the mix.
Beautifully shot, this is certainly one of the more deliberately crafted of the recent Nikkatsu pink films. While this reviewer has not yet had a chance to compare this with Safe Word by Shiraishi Kōji or Kaneko Shūsuke’s When the Rain Falls, it continues to be a shame that Nikkatsu is yet to pick a female director to bring a fresh perspective to these kinds of stories — especially when this is very much about reversing the male gaze. Perhaps that’s something we can hope for by the 60th anniversary.
2022 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Daigo Matsui | WRITERS: Sorami Date, Naocola Yamazaki | CAST: Akari Fukunaga, Daichi Kaneko, Akio Kaneda, | DISTRIBUTOR: JAPAN CUTS | RUNNING TIME: 99 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 26 July-6 August 2023 (JAPAN CUTS)
