What became known as “Roman porno” was a Japanese studio invention of the 1970s and ’80s. Created by Nikkatsu Studios, the films were about an hour long, shot in a single week, and featured softcore sex interspersed with plot. These productions promised erotic images, the same as “Pink Cinema’ did earlier on. Hideo Nakata’s White Lily is part of the Roman Porno Reboot, proving how enduring the brand had become for some audience members
Hideo Nakata is the same Director who gave us the original genre pictures Ringu and Dark Water. The story of White Lily concerns Haruka, a shy pottery student, who falls for her teacher, Tokiko. Their relationship turns into an after-hours seduction. For about twenty minutes, the film features lesbian romance. Then, predictably, in strolls the male pottery apprentice, bringing in parallels with Ghost. The clay is wet and sculpted by day, bodies are by night, and the nudity begins.
The erotic scenes are frequent and competently staged. Original Roman Porno directors made the sex moments absurd, surreal, or even disturbing, all skin, no heat. The clay becomes a metaphor for bodies, lilies blooming for intimacy, petals falling for fleeting beauty. The film never decides whether to treat the material seriously or have fun with it. Roman porno works best when it’s either gloriously trashy or profound, much like the cinema of Russ Meyer and John Waters. White Lily is squarely in the middle, being safe, polite, even tasteful, when the reverse is a genre trope.
“The clay becomes a metaphor for bodies, lilies blooming for intimacy.”
Haruka and Tokiko’s first encounters carry a softness that doesn’t conform to the genre’s more exploitative tendencies. The film can’t sustain that intimacy, and once the male apprentice, the script hustles back to a sexual triangle like the more transgressive The Dreamers by Bernardo Bertolucci. The queer romance becomes a prelude to a more traditional triangle
Those looking for a large screen erotic story along the lines of Anais Nin and Henry Miller with some artistry, shock, or even laughter will feel cheated as Roman porno’s legacy of excess is absent. This film tries to push boundaries, though not everyone will find it palatable. Beneath its surface of constant sexual imagery, it unfolds as a drama about toxic relationships and the scars they leave behind. Yet these moments aren’t shot with intimacy or passion; they are cool, mechanical, almost ritualistic, what might be called emotionless porn.
The closest the film ventures into graphic territory is a symbolic “licking” of a flower and an erotic zipping up of a dress. Stripped of tenderness, these scenes become a commentary on the experience of alienation. While surprising in its sheer sexual volume, the movie ultimately functions more as a drama-thriller using flesh not to arouse, but to disturb, and to underline how desire without feeling corrodes the soul.
In the end, White Lily fulfills only the bare minimum of its chosen genre. There is nudity, and plenty of it. But Roman porno was always about more than naked bodies, as it was about what directors did around and between them. Here, nothing much happens. The petals fall, the clay spins, the clothes come off. Roman porno was trashy and artistic in the same breath, a guilty pleasure with a subversive edge, which this isn’t.
"…The clay is wet and sculped by day, bodies are by night,"
