no satisfaction
by
Douglas Messerli
Nagisa
Oshima (screenplay, based on a fiction by Yamada Fūtarō, and director) 悦楽
(Etsuraku)(Pleasures of the Flesh) / 1965
Tutor
Atsushi Wakizaka (Katsuo Nakamura) has been invited to his former student’s
wedding, which he witnesses with great pain, for he has long been in love with
Shoko (Mariko Kaga). Indeed, as we soon discover in a flash-back, he has killed
a man for her, after the villain, who had sexually molested the young girl,
returns to blackmail the parents who have kept the long-ago event silent. Asked
by the parents to do something about it, Wakizaka follows the blackmailer onto
a train and strangles him, tossing his body off the train.
What’s more, another man has seen the murder, and now comes to him with a rather outlandish proposal: the petty bureaucrat, Hayami (Shoichi Ozawa), has embezzled 98 million yen, and realizes that the missing money will soon be noticed, and he will go to jail; but if the police cannot find the money, at the most he will get only a 5-year term. He asks that, in return for his silence about Wakizaka’s murder, that the tutor hold the money in his absence, returning the suitcase to him upon his leaving prison. Of course, if Wakizaka does not live up to the bargain, he will be turned in to the police and even killed.
Only now can truly understand why the
foolish and financially destitute Wakizaka is disturbed by Shoko’s wedding. He
is a broken man, threatened by a stranger, with no future prospects. Indeed, in
Nagisa Oshima’s hands, the story of this well-meaning loser is almost comic. It
takes only an imaginary vision of Shoko’s return to unhinge Wakizaka, as he
suddenly determines to open the suitcase and begin spending down its millions
of yen on, as Oshima’s title hints, The
Pleasures of the Flesh.
Wakizaka’s first choice, Hitomi (Yumiko
Nogawa), looks vaguely like Shoko, but is a prostitute who, at the moment, is
attached to a gangster. With an offer of 1,000,000 yen a month, who can refuse?
Hitomi, becomes quickly spoiled with her new life, determining to get a
facelift and developing lavish habits. When her gangster boyfriend returns to
claim her, she protects Wakizaka from possible violence by cutting off part of
her own finger, as a sign of her return to the “gang.”
The ex-tutor’s second choice, Shizuko (Masako Yagi). is a married woman; but with
a husband who has no job and who is troubled with a sick daughter. She takes up
Wakizaka’s offer and becomes his lover, secretly meeting her husband on the
side, but in the end, upon observing her secretive comings and goings, he
offers her money and a house just to get rid of her.
The nurse, Keiko (Hiroko Shimizu),
creates a more serious situation. She is willing to go with him for the
money—it will certainly help pay for her ongoing research—but will not let him
sexually touch her until he finally marries her; yet love is still fleeting,
and he soon loses interest, taking up, as he began, with another prostitute,
this, a mute girl Mari (Toshiko Higuchi), also controlled by a gangster pimp,
who’s willing to temporarily give up his girl for the money she brings in. At
least Mari is sexually willing and, unable to speak, cannot make his life as
difficult as his three previous partners.
The date of Hayami’s parole, however, is
nearing, and Wakizaka fears for his life, even trying to drown
himself—unsuccessfully. It turns out Mari’s pimp, so impressed with Wakizaka’s
spending, knowing that Hayami has died in prison of pneumonia, is out to
reclaim the prisoner’s money. Wakizaka, having spent nearly all of the money,
laughs, admitting his guilt, and as the pimp moves to kill him, Mari stabs her
prostitute friend, again saving Wakizaka’s life. If nothing else, his unloving
women friends have kept alive just long enough to suffer the tortures of his
actions.
With nowhere left to go, the now almost
comical Wakizaka returns to his old apartment, where he is visited by Shoko,
willing finally to have sex with him if only he will give her enough money to
save her husband’s business from bankruptcy.
Penniless, and shocked by the turn of
events, Wakizaka reveals his past crimes, all committed in Shoko’s name,
without telling her that the man he murdered was her former molester.
Soon after, the police come for him, as
he quickly puts a poison capsule (given to him by his former nurse lover) into
his mouth. He insists he will swallow it if the police do not reveal who has
turned him in: of course, it is Shoko, the only woman he has truly loved.
Oshima’s first independent feature,
accordingly, is a wonderful mix of irony, comedy, and tragedy. As in so many of
his films, the crimes of its central character arise not so much from personal
decisions but from the evils of the society itself. For such poor,
unimaginative men like Wakizaka there is no salvation, doomed as they are, by
their very social and psychological situations.
In 1965, upon the first showing of
Oshima’s film, his work caused a great deal of controversy for its seemingly
borderline pornography or “pink” porn qualities and its relationships with the
yakuza/gangster films. Today, as critic Dan Schneider has pointed out, it might
get a PG-13 rating. But it also has become far clearer, over the years, just
how politically astute is Oshima’s metaphorical satire. Not only is the film’s
hero looking for love in all the wrong places, but he can clearly get “no
satisfaction” in a society stacked against him from the very beginning.
Los Angeles,
September 11, 2016
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