Director: Ryû Murakami
Year: 1992
Country: Japan
Alternate Titles: Topâzu
Genre: Exploitation
Plot:
Going through her daily routines, a college student finds her services as a specialty prostitute for wealthy men with money to grow in demand. Constantly forced into a series of increasingly degenerate activities by her clients that constantly interferes with her personal life, the gradual toll this takes on her and her clients eventually reaches a boiling point when it becomes clear her unrequited affections for a previous client are still present and controlling her every move which eventually descends into a horrifying ordeal for everyone around her.
Review:
This was a decidedly troubling if overall quality-style arthouse exploitation effort. The films at its best with the high-end amount of sadistic sex scenes she has with her clients, featuring a large number of detachedly cold and degrading sequences with her clients. Rather than focus on the eroticism or even sleaze angle that this could've gone down with how the scenes are written up, the fact that everything here has a level of realism that almost feels as though they're cribbed from actual escort sessions. Being slapped, forced to bear bondage gear, appearing submissive to the instructions of her clients, and various other forms of actions that present a cold emotional tie far removed from the genuine sensuality that should be present in this kind of genre effort. That there's so much of this in the first half of the film that attempts to portray her meetings with the clientele in this matter form the opposite of erotic due to the way they come off here.
Moreover, the sense that this is all due to the films' study of her character during this period. The detached feeling she has towards her job as a prostitute comes from her attitude towards life, looking at everything with the kind of emotional distance that coincides with how she approaches that kind of work. Taking these kinds of jobs simply because it's a means of work makes her the kind of meek, timid being that will flourish under the kind of activity that requires her to perform that kind of explicit action she goes through and its toll on her sanity. While the second half is decidedly a bit different in terms of the type of personality taken beforehand, there's still a fun time taken here with the kind of degeneration of her sanity that's featured here and giving this a lot to like.
There are a few minor problems with this one. That mostly comes from the aforementioned final half where the film switches gears from the kind of stone-faced experience of her sexual antics into more of an avant-garde style of the film. This comes off as rather jarring where it comes off as from an entirely different film altogether with the way it comes in after a cold, detached series of hardcore S&N style sequences and debauchery that she goes through into this wildly varying type of experience. Featuring her succumbing to a random drug and then goes on this strange spiritual journey that comes off highly unappealing with the change in tone and appearance, ending the film on a highly underwhelming note coming after the dark and depressing beginning. It's also way too long for its own good, running on longer for its own good, and could've been trimmed down even before fixing the end which brings this down slightly.
Overview: ***.5/5
A fine exploitation offering looking at the explicit sexual antics that take centerstage here while managing to feature a few minor flaws, there's a lot to like here. Give this a shot if you're a fan of the type of strongly sexual film that this focuses on while most others who are turned off by the kind of flaws on display or not interested in this kind of psychological focus should heed caution.
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