This Wednesday, same time, same station, Edwin Johnson Screening Room, 1418 5th. St., Berkeley, 7:00 PM we’ll be showing IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES, by Nagisa Oshima. This is probably the most challenging film of the series and the most profound, particularly considering it was made in 1976. Its depiction of sex and violence, the real connection, without the phony moralism promoted by censorship martyrs, seems even truer in the age of pornography. I’ve never seen another film like it. Maybe that’s because it is so true to its subject it can’t be duplicated or rivaled. But be forewarned. It doesn’t hold back. If you think you might be offended this would be one to skip.

Some words from Richard von Busack:

“In the Realm of the Senses comes from the tradition of erotic Japanese prints, the shunga, in which the faces are stylized, but the organs are delineated with almost topographical care. As Angela Carter wrote, the Japanese “look upon each other’s exposed genitalia with a tender readiness that still perturbs the West.”

Easily perturbed Westerners should be warned. There is the explicitness of hard-core pornography in this uncut version of the film, which was originally released here with the more extreme images excised.

Certainly, an audience fresh out of the beautifully stylized reveries of love and death in Leaving Las Vegas–complete with the explicit finale (”Look how hard you made me, baby”)–might be ready for Oshima. Perfect lust and perfect love look exactly alike on screen, and in between the love-making, In the Realm of the Senses presents us with moments as strangely graceful as Leaving Las Vegas does. (I’m especially fond of an exchange between Sada and Kichizo. Slightly amused by her ardor, he asks, “Can’t you wait?” She responds, almost desperately, “That’s all I ever do.”)

The 20-year-old film is among other things, a guide on how to make a movie about sex that avoids both the cheat that is soft-core pornography and the visit to the urologist’s clinic that is hard-core. Alas, no filmmakers have followed the lead of In the Realm of the Senses; the film exists, beautifully photographed, full of remarkable integrity–and almost alone.

I’m not even sure I’d recommend it to people under 30, let alone allow anyone under 18 see it. When I was young, and I saw even a censored version of the film, I was repelled; my vision of sex was perhaps more informed by Cat Stevens, and it was all about nice, sweet gentle things that you wanted to do to one another.

An older person will have endured a few broken-down love affairs, and long periods of loneliness unredeemed by the bruised sweetness loneliness has for adolescents. At that younger age, you have at least the comfort that it’s the world’s fault that you’re alone. Later, you know better. Older viewers will have realized that death is not this cool thing that happens to other people but something awful that will happen to them presently. Sex becomes darker, and all the more precious, because of this insight. “In the ecstasy of love,” notes Oshima, “the cry is ‘I’m dying.’ ” But as one becomes older, the cry becomes “Kill me now.”

In the Realm of the Senses (1976; NC-17; 105 min.), directed and written by Nagisa Oshima, photographed Hideo Ito and starring Tatsuya Fuji and Eiko Matsuda.

See you Wednesday.

Rob