Blue Film Woman (Kan Mukai, 1969)

4/10
Fantasia's doing a whole feature on Japanese "pink" (read: blue) movies from the 60's and 70's and 1969's Blue Film Woman was the first they were showing. It was certainly...different. I can't possibly fathom this film actually arousing anybody, and not just because of the conservativeness of the sex scenes (some kissing, female breasts, awkward writhing for 2 minutes = sex, apparently). But also the context. The movie is about a girl who turns to prostitution to repay a debt incurred by her parents (who die early in the movie). As such, most of the sex is awkward, unerotic, and at worst, disturbing - at one point before her death the mother is raped by the semi-retarded, reclusive son of her creditor. Yeah. I'm hopefully going to make it out to a few other of these pink movies before the month is out so at least I'll have a basis to compare the sexuality and eroticism between them but this one's pretty far down there.
The movie itself was poorly directed with mostly handheld camera work, although the oversaturated 60's colors were a fun touch. The acting is bad and the Japanese-dub-over-Japanese-speaking-actors is unmatched almost to the point of comedy. The music is pretty good though, and there are some intentionally funny moments in the script (well, one).