The Woman with Red Hair

This is the most under-rated movie on IMDb in terms of avg score rating. This is a sophisticated softcore counterpart to "ai no corrida" yet surpasses that film. This film is only an incredibly short 73 minutes long but says almost everything it set out to about the concrete nature of romance in a homosocial and cruel world. This is a realist and working class reclamation of the "passion beyond reason" genre. There are hints of death and perversion amidst dialogue of surpassing clarity. The long shots and absurdity remind me of Tsai Mian Liang. Maybe a dark sense of humour runs through this film, maybe actions in 1970s japan will always be funny to us because of cultural difference, however I belly laughed whilst watching this film but was also deeply moved. Beware, unless you are acquainted with Japanese 1970s pink movies the male leads will be so unsympathetic that you will have no appreciation for their difficulties. Beware also if you are a pinky violence collector only interested in the sex, it is deliberately reduced to clinical joint masturbation and this is a strangely unsexy movie. For everybody else, enjoy, this is profound, moving, funny, well observed, gritty, funny and most of all passionate.