Tokyo Decadence

Tokyo Decadence includes what may be the only near-death experience ever played for laughs in a movie. [15 Oct 1993, p.D26]

A few moments of black comedy and some pointed jabs at contemporary Japanese society cannot redeem this plotless, graphically gruesome ordeal. Read full review

But despite its audacious sexuality, Tokyo Decadence isn't really honest about its pornography -- or its politics. The sex scenes are more about the twisted uses of power than they are about erotica. And like a movie that purports to be anti-violent but racks up a dougle-digit body count to make its point, the film relies too much on sexual excess to make a persuasive argument against it. Its pretensions fail to conceal the emptiness at the heart of Murakami's vision. [30 July 1993, p.AE23]

Director Ryu Murakami obviously has a few nonexploitative impulses, but more than half of his movie is graphic sex scenes (it's rated NC-17), and it seems mostly just an excuse to sneak into a mainstream theater the kind of S&M, bondage and urination scenes that have been banned from even the hardest of hard-core porn videos since the late '80s. [15 Oct 1993]

Lacking the intellectual, emotional and philosophical rigours of, say, a film by Oshima, this brazenly voyeuristic nonsense is finally as incoherent and unilluminating as it's hackneyed. Read full review