This is one of the weirder Japanese movies I've seen (though not nearly as weird as my favorite, HAPPINESS OF KATAKURIS) and not exactly a comedy. The lead is an older male who is having impotency problems. So, he receives injections (more about that later) and gets his sexual satisfaction drugging his wife and photographing her nude or putting her in intimate situations with a young doctor (they don't have sex, but the old guy enjoys feeling jealous of them--it makes him feel younger). Unfortunately, the old guy is REALLY sick and dies after watching his wife strip for him. Then, in an odd twist of fate, the wife, the doctor and the old man's odd daughter all accidentally ingest poison and die! Well, not all of it was accidental--the daughter put poison in her mom's tea because she was jealous of the relationship between the doctor and the mother. Too weird!
Although I guess I liked it (just because it dared to be so different) it is not a movie I would rush out to watch. Another problem is that the version from The International Collection has crappy dubbing. In the prologue to the movie, the doctor must talk for about 5 minutes and NONE of it was subtitled--what he said is completely beyond anyone who doesn't speak Japanese. Also, the material is VERY sexually charged (though there is no nudity in the film) but they talk so cryptically about the impotence I had a strong feeling either the people that did the subtitles left A LOT out or perhaps the movie was originally very cryptic. For example, we have no injections what sort of injections the old man gets or why it's BAD that he's been getting them so often. I was just baffled.
Although I guess I liked it (just because it dared to be so different) it is not a movie I would rush out to watch. Another problem is that the version from The International Collection has crappy dubbing. In the prologue to the movie, the doctor must talk for about 5 minutes and NONE of it was subtitled--what he said is completely beyond anyone who doesn't speak Japanese. Also, the material is VERY sexually charged (though there is no nudity in the film) but they talk so cryptically about the impotence I had a strong feeling either the people that did the subtitles left A LOT out or perhaps the movie was originally very cryptic. For example, we have no injections what sort of injections the old man gets or why it's BAD that he's been getting them so often. I was just baffled.