NOW ON VOD! Isao Yukisada’s Aroused by Gymnopedies may technically be categorized as a ‘roman porno’, as it was a film directly conceived to serve as a commemorative film to mark the 45th anniversary of Nikkatsu Studio’s series of theatrical soft-core films produced from 1971 until 1988. But someone could alternatively label it as potentially the first ‘melancholic porno’?
For this week-in-the-life-of Itsuji Itao’s has-been director Shinjin Furuya is kind of like a Todd Solondz approach to Tom DiCillo’s Living in Oblivion, just with way more sex. After leaving his house on the way to a low-budget film shoot, the critically revered yet financially destitute filmmaker is sleepwalking through his emotionless existence.
His mind is forever the prisoner of a love so pure but lost to him. He indulges in carnal pleasures at each available or gifted opportunity, as a man would a glass of water after crawling out of a desert. Thus, starved of his muse, he offers no quarrel when the pathetic film he’s attached to falls apart, and he spirals into a series of erotic misadventures with a series of nymphet sycophants who are the only ones getting pleasure from this shell of a man whose heart has turned to stone.
“…he spirals into a series of erotic misadventures with a series of nymphet sycophants…”
Imagine Roy Scheider’s Joe Gideon for All That Jazz, getting all the tail he can carry and getting absolutely none of the invigoration or inspiration. Furuya is searching for a connection on a deeper level. The sex is brief, intense, but swiftly departed from, with our protagonist simply adrift, wandering in search of warmth and tenderness that has fled.
Furuya allows himself, as the seven days pass, to be thrown about by the winds of change and chance. Being pulled about by eager young sirens. Each is a combination of fascinated and infatuated with the aging artisan who treats each with little respect or fondness. Each stop sees him merely treading water. An all too brief distraction from his bitter self-loathing and loneliness.
As his journey home winds down, Furuya finds himself overwhelmed by the soulless sexual advances, whilst desperately clinging to his former celebrity in the hopes of not allowing the remnants of his identity to be flushed down the toilet with the rest of his existence. After crossing with old haunts and faces, he must finally confront the secret hurt that has aided him in burning most of his bridges and reconnect with the heart that fueled his visual poetry from which he made his name.
With Aroused by Gymnopedies, there’s definitely an odd blend of emotional and erotic elements on offer at the buffet this picture is. Aficionados of the genre being celebrated here have their tastes amply catered to. Yet, the casual cinema goer should not be too hasty in simply hearing the word porno and not taking the journey. Miss then such viewers will see the sad and subtle portrait of a broken man who realizes too late the power of inspiration that awoke in him during his marriage. The bleak encounters he happens into are romance-less. So, if you are in for more than a heapin’ helpin’ of naughty bits, you might enjoy director Yukisada’s albeit bawdy yet human tragedy of what happens when an artist can no longer find beauty in his world.
"…albeit bawdy yet human tragedy of what happens when an artist can no longer find beauty in his world."
