Seifuku no furyo

Directed by "death photographer" Tsurisaki Kiyotaka, PARANOID GARDEN, a WWII-themed AV (adult video), represents the beginning of his career, before he discovered his specialty. It's decently directed, but I don't think all that different from a lot of AV.

Less a story than a set-up, the film is about a family in the waning days of WWII mourning the death of their son in combat in increasingly bizarre ways. There's sadomasochism and incest, and when the authorities learn the younger daughter is hiding a deserter, they resort to all manner of nefarious methods to get her to reveal his whereabouts.

An interesting quality of Japanese AV - or at least this one - is that it seems less sex-focused than its American counterparts. That makes sense, as when you have to blur out everyone's genitals the depiction of simple sex becomes (even more) visually boring. However, it also leads to a lot of very weird sublimations, like toe-sucking, (fake) coprophilia, and a "nose speculum" scene that seems like a pretty obvious visual metaphor for something... (Even weirder, this isn't the first time I've seen such a thing, though given the other, another AV called LOVER M, was also produced by Cinemagic, maybe someone there just has a particularly weird fetish...)

All this is fine, but eventually grows wearisome even at just an hour. Given the war content, I'm sure someone could construct an elaborate intellectual defense for the project, but you'd also have to ignore the fact that such themes and imagery crop up in lots of Japanese erotica throughout the decades. Ultimately, a better inquiry into the subject would be sociological rather than based on this film, and a better dive into the director's filmography would probably start elsewhere.

Sometimes a movie just doesn't know what it wants to be. This is a case in point. The first eight & a half minutes is all story. I found it very interesting expecting a good drama with a few sex scenes. Then it moved to the first sex scene.

Any sex going on is fairly brief and there is a heavy mosaic (pixelation) per Japanese censorship so you can't actually see anything. A couple of kinky things in the film are obviously fake. The actresses have appeared in both Adult Videos and softcore Pink Eiga. Is the sex real? Can't say because you can't tell. And there's no "Happy Ending" in any scene. Should add that many hardcore Japanese adult videos of the early 1990's had mosaics/pixelation that wasn't as obstructive.

The story itself continues throughout the film in between sex or kinky scenes but stops making much sense. A lack of continuity. And even the bondage scenes suffer. One girl is naked in rope bondage, then clothed in bondage in the next scene, then partially naked still in bondage, then clothed and in bondage. In the middle the other girl is also inexplicably in bondage as well and then not.

Is this a softcore Pink Eiga? A period drama? A hardcore Adult video? It just doesn't work as any of them.