Edo Porn (1981)

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

This is a biography of the famous Japanese woodblock print-maker Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), one of the most well-renowned Ukiyo-e artists. The Japanese title of the movie, Hokusai Manga, is actually the name of the 13-volume sketchbook he published cca. 1814. The sketchbook contains a number of shunga drawings (erotic pictures), which the film decides to focus on as far as Hokusai's work is concerned. The people from Hokusai's life are all here; his daughter who spent her entire life with him, his friend and Japan's first professional writer, Kyokutei Bakin, an alluring model called Onae (who was, as it seems, invented for the film because there's no mention of her online at least), and even his contemporary Utamaro Kitagawa, another famous woodblock artist. But really, the film fails to do anything memorable with this ensemble, instead turning into a generic biopic without any eccentricity or artistic vision. The movie feels very drawn out and boring at certain times. There are also some attempts at humor which completely miss their mark in the movie's first half. The second half, where everyone is much older, is a tiny bit more entertaining and the scene where Hokusai paints his famous tentacle porn drawing "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife" is pretty hilarious and reminds me of Ed Wood. By the way, the old person make-up is pretty bad.This is pretty disappointing, especially coming from a great director such as Kaneto Shindo and with a notable cast (Ken Ogata, Jo Shishido, Nobuko Otowa). A bland biography with a very cheap budget. Usually that's not a bad thing in and of itself, but this truly comes off as a cheap TV-production. Campy acting, bad effects and an unappealing visual style where everything is set in like two or three rooms which all look the same in their watery brown-ish hues. There is some nudity in the movie which makes it less boring, but it doesn't save it much. The music isn't bad but sounds like it belongs to an adventure/action movie a la Indiana Jones (take a listen during the end credits).

I first noticed this film amongst the more popular Japanese films on Hulu, but I didn't pay much mind to it, cause I figured I could guess how it got there (being titled "Edo Porn" and all). But when I realized that this was a film by Kaneto Shindô (Onibaba, Kuroneko, The Naked Island), I couldn't pass up a chance to watch another one of his films. This film is a portrait of the Japanese artist Hokusai, who I knew nothing about going in, but whom this film has piqued my interest in. He created the famous "Great Wave off Kanagawa". Apparently, he also created what could probably be considered the earliest example of tentacle porn. The sequence in the film where he draws that is... amazing. This film starts off a generally well-made, albeit somewhat odd biopic of an eccentric man. In the last act however... I can understand the criticisms. There's a lot of Hokusai and his friend stumbling around - the actors in unconvincing 90-year-old man makeup doing their best half-crazy half-senile old man impressions. There's a lot of Hokusai talking to himself about death. Things get really strange, but I have to admit, that's kind of what I love about this film. In a strange way, I think this is a good companion film to Kenji Mizoguchi's "Utamaro and His Five Women". That film is also about a famous Japanese woodblock printmaker of the same era, Utamaro, who is mentioned and briefly appears in "Edo Porn" as something of a rival of Hokusai. Made 35 years earlier, it's a completely different style of film, but, y'know, they're completely different styles of artists.

This starts very well indeed with interesting characters and situations and I wasn't at first aware that this was a bio pic on the life and work of Hokusai, he of the amorous octopus woodcut. Certainly the first half is very beautiful and engaging with it has also to be said lots of nudity as the artist sketches out his erotic pictures. The last half, unfortunately, at least to western eyes seems overly drawn out with the characters now made to look old in rather poor effects make up. It may be that we have different ideas about which features to accentuate to get an aged look but in any event it does not seem very realistic. Again it is perhaps an eastern preoccupation that so much time should now be devoted to regretting what has not been, looking forward to death etc. What I have not yet mentioned of course is the central scene where in fantasy and fact we see the beautiful nude and the octopus. Again, for me, not the greatest special effects but the scene certainly carries power with Hokusai's claim that he is painting not a woman being ravished but the hidden desires of women and is undeniably erotic. Well worth a watch and some gorgeous views of Mt Fuji to accompany the sequence dealing with his many interpretations of the elegant mountain.