Your cinematic buttocks will feel the sting of excellence from the remastered whips in the landmark 1994 Japanese sex worker film A New Love In Tokyo, directed by Banmei Takahashi, who adapted the screenplay from the story by Nobuyoshi Araki, Kei Shimamoto, and Sho Kenzen. Rei (Sawa Suzuki) is a stage actress and model who works at night as a dominatrix. Ayumi (Reiko Kataoka) is a supporting partner to her hard-studying boyfriend while working at night as a call girl. Rei is part of a theater company that is putting on a show about a video game programmer who gets addicted to his own game. Rei plays the part of the sweet girlfriend of the programmer, who is dutiful and nurturing to her glass-eyed digital junkie. Rei plays a different part at her job, where she tortures powerful men who get hard off being made powerless. She sticks needles through their nipples and lights candles up their bums.
Ayumi is paid to have more conventional sex at hotels through the call service she works for. Her student boyfriend has no idea about this, as he is all about puzzles when not hitting the books. She makes large deposits that she tells her boyfriend are from her father in the couple’s bank account. One night, while partying late in midnight Tokyo, Rei and Ayumi meet and decide they should hang out more. These two work hard, so when they are off the clock, they play even harder.
I completely missed this during the whirlwind of wonderful films in 1994. This was most likely due to A New Love In Tokyo being originally distributed in the US as a fake sequel to Tokyo Decadence, a movie I have not seen but was for rent at every corner store in the country back then. I can guarantee the resolution on the 90s VHS of Takahashi’s work is nowhere near as stunning as this gorgeous new transfer. For a movie that is over three decades old, the picture quality looks like it was carved out of a diamond with a laser. The definition is sharp, the colors pop, and the whole thing glitters in the nastiest way. It looks brand new, as it would have when it came out.
“… Rei is a stage actress and model who works at night as a dominatrix …”
This means the graphic S&M sequences are some of the best you will see in a 20th-century film. Takahashi really puts the snazz on, making sure all the leather and metal sparkle. Also brought out are a lot of playthings that are left out of more superficial S&M depictions. Fresh audiences will be schooled thoroughly on what the whole scene is about, with Suzuki as their a*s-whooping teacher. The whipping is far from the dominant element of this multifaceted study of commercial sex in Japan, but it steals the spotlight with its chains and nipple hooks.
A New Love In Tokyo is a genius deconstruction of the sex worker sub-genre, also known as boulevard films. Traditional boulevard films showcase the lives of the artists formerly known as hookers, with emphasis on the seedy underbelly of the flesh trade. This film goes much further than simply humanizing sex workers; it refuses to define these women by their jobs. The story correctly compartmentalizes what goes on at work from their normal lives, just like everyone else in the movies who isn’t a cop gets to do.
I am fascinated by how easily Takahashi is able to whiplash between extreme exploitation and everyday drama, giving the audience a real taste of the character’s mundane activities despite the sensationalistic way they earn a paycheck. Even the brothels are reduced to simple workday routines, where everyone does their job and wishes they were somewhere else. But then everything will rev up again with high-powered edginess. There is a variation of the traditional enforcer wearing sunglasses here that goes places you never imagined. A New Love In Tokyo does for sex workers what The Sopranos does for the mafia: it shows what the people behind the jobs are like. I wished I hadn’t missed it the first time and relished this opportunity to finally see it.
"…steals the spotlight with its chains and nipple hooks."
