Our office of Film and Literature Classification today inclines to the view that the film is indeed art - thankfully so, since that means we can at last see it uncut for the first time since the Melbourne Film Festival of 1976. This is the period that saw the appearance of Barbet Schroeder's Maitresse , Marco Ferreri's The Last Woman , Pasolini's Salo , and Miklos Jancso's Private Vices, Public Virtues , among others. Oshima, for his part, had the keenest appreciation of the paradoxes involved in this ambition.
Porn reveals all to the camera's gaze, but in a sense transmits nothing.
It alienates as much as it educates, deadens as much as it arouses. But it at least leaves a zone of mystery, intact for every viewer, as to how the act of sex really feels for those involved in its intimacies. In the Realm of the Senses . It is both an immediate, carnal film, and a secretive, cryptic one. The film showcases as many traditional Japanese songs as it does sexual positions, making it an avant garde, porno musical - although, maddeningly, none of the lyrics are subtitled.