In the Realm of the Senses and Empire of Passion Out On Criterion

Two extraordinary films by master Japanese filmmaker Nagisa Oshima are out from Criterion this week: In the Realm of the Senses and Empire of Passion.

In the Realm of the Senses (1976) is based on the 1936 true incident of Sada Abe (here played by Eiko Matsuda) and her lover (Tatsuya Fuji) whose sexual obsession with each other reaches such a feverish pitch they hole up and engage in libidinous extremes until she eventually strangles her lover and cuts off his penis. She ended up wandering for days in and out of taverns with a blissed out expression carrying her lover’s penis, and became a strangely sympathetic figure with the public at the time. The movie (with plenty of hardcore sequences) was a scandal at the time, but it is also an artistic triumph. Also included is a wonderful new interview with the lead actor and a 1976 filmed interview with the director and cast.

Empire of Passion (1978) is an interesting companion piece of sorts, and won Oshima the Best Director award at Cannes. Set in a small country village in 1865, the film is about a wife who enters into an affair with a younger man and conspires to kill her husband (a rickshaw driver) and throw his body down a well. His ghost ends up haunting the town, especially his wife, in the eerily beautiful tale that plays like The Postman Always Rings Twice meets The Ring. There is a video essay extra on the disc by film historian Catherine Russell that is wonderfully illuminating.