So have you ever heard of a movie genre popular in Japan called pink films? There's no exact equivalent in Western culture, so it gets a little hard to explain at points...

See, just like the rest of the world, Japan experienced an explosion in nudity, sex and other adult fare in the arts back in the 1960s; but unlike many other countries, censorship laws in Japan prohibit the showing of actual sex onscreen (even in pornography) or the display of pubic hair (or at least back when this issue first surfaced in Japanese cinema; I don't know very much about Japanese cinema, to tell you the truth, so don't know if such laws are still in place or not). What ended up developing in Japan's movie industry, then, is a subgenre unto itself known as "pink films," a strange combination of softcore sexuality, alternative sensibilities, and Western "exploitation" themes, a subgenre that for decades had its own set of fans, industry publications and the like.

The rise of home video in the '80s, of course, nearly killed off the pink-film industry; but it turns out that the genre is finding a new popularity in the postmodern '00s, basically as the Japanese version of American "alt-porn" but with not nearly as much actual sex. The most famous of these postmodern pink films in Western society, for example, is a bizarre 2005 black comedy called The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai -- here's the official English website for it, for example, although be warned that you should definitely not be checking it out while at work. (And by the way, for those of you uncomfortable with graphic pornography, don't be worried; such films are no more explicit than a typical '80s direct-to-cable beach sex comedy.) It's hard to describe what exactly happens over the course of the movie, so I'll let the edgy film website Twitch describe it for me...

"Glamorous Life tells a story of the lovely Sachiko Hanai, a particularly libidinous call girl whose specialty is acting out the part of ‘Home Tutor’ to her randy clients. After one particularly energetic session, she finds herself sitting in a café unaware of a particularly shady deal taking place next to her. Events take a turn for the worse and she ends up stumbling out of the café with a bullet in her head, and a mysterious item accidentally placed in her handbag during the confusion. However, the bullet lodged in her brain doesn’t kill her, but results in her being able to absorb information like a sponge, and become hyper-intelligent. She also finds the mysterious item in her handbag is a replica of George W Bush’s finger, the imprint of which can set off a code and cause mass worldwide destruction. Following me so far?"

Not really, Twitch -- which of course is why I love it! The official movie site has lots of video previews and still photos, enough to give you a good sense of what the film is actually like; and now that I've seen the previews myself, I'm really curious as to what the entire movie must be like, as well as the other postmodern pink films being produced over there these days. Does anyone know a good English-language source for following along and learning the latest? By all means, please post it as a comment if you do!