Sing a Song of Sex (Nihon shunka-ko)
Part of the BAMcinématek series The Cruel Stories of Nagisa Oshima
Directed by Nagisa Oshima
With Ichiro Araki, Hideko Yoshida
Wed, April 8 at 4:30, 6:50, 9:15pm
(1967) 103min
“Sing a Song of Sex offers an intent, penetrating portrait of a generation confronting its new freedoms and its inability to act on them.” —James Quandt, Cinematheque Ontario
Oshima vents his frustrations with the apathy of postwar Japanese youth in this examination of a jaded generation. Four young men visit Tokyo to take their university entrance exams. Rather than face up to their responsibilities—and the mounting sociopolitical issues confronting Japan—the students spend their time carousing, drinking, and indulging in sexual fantasies. As their behavior turns increasingly callous, Oshima steers the film into successively shocking and surreal realms. New print.
The Auteurs on Sing a Song of Sex
"It...seems one of the purest of existentialist movies, employing a narrative neither digressive nor wandering, yet somehow freeform, based on choices arbitrary, willful, and fantastic." More