Tokyo Decadence

Toronto International Film Festival Program Guide
1992

Tokyo Decadence
Ryu Murakami
Japan, 1991, 112 minutes
Colour/35mm
Production Company: Melsat Inc/JVD Co. Ltd.
Executive Producer: Hidenori Taga
Producer: Aikoh Suzuki, Tadanobu Hirao, Yousuke Nagata Screenplay: Ryu Murakami
Cinematography: Tadash Aoki
Editor: Kazuki Katashima
Art Director: Ryu Murakami
Sound: Masami Usui
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Principal Cast Miho Nikaido, Sayoko Amano, Tenmei Kanou, Masahiko Shimada

Curious about bondage play and designer drugs? Aren’t we all. Ever imagine dominating fabulously wealthy Japanese tycoons? It’s the stuff of dreams. Ryu Murakami, groove-meister filmmaker and novelist (“Almost Transparent Blue”) is no fool. His Tokyo Decadence revels in this dreamscape, this demi-monde of leather, clean needles and yen. And yet the film, episodic and moody as it is, retains a strong narrative spine: a young call girl’s search for personal salvation against the backdrop of her utterly corrupt society.

Ai is pretty, with an innocent and naive appearance not entirely dispelled by her professional attire. We meet her at work, bound and gagged in a chair, waiting for her john’s dreamy narcotic injection. She wakes, collects her money and sits primly in a park until paged with her next assignment. And so it goes: a coke vacuum yazuka invents new uses for motorized dildoes and new variations on low-level humiliation; a spoiled young brat almost gets choked to death searching for the perfect orgasm; faux geisha, contemptuous of her specialty, tease her unmercifully in the bathroom. Things begin to change for Ai when she assists Saki, a cynical and breathlessly efficient veteran dominatrix in a very special job (water sports, whips and plastic sodomy). They end up in Saki’s luxurious apartment doing drugs and talking about life. Saki's sureness, emptiness and confidence drugs prompt Ai into action.

This is a fundamentally subversive and disturbing film—S&M and mainlining have never looked sexier. But Murakami adeptly throws us off balance, with deadpan black humour and a complex (if deeply, strangely Japanese) politic involving the notion of “wealth without pride.” Finally, though, Tokyo Decadence’s genius lies in its refusal to compromise, summed up by Saki’s final advice to Ai: “You must learn to resist ambiguity.”
—Noah Cowan