Artwork by Ariel Esteban Cayer
Ayumi (Reiko Kataoka) juggles between her work as a call-girl and a life with a boyfriend unable to get into college. Soon, she meets Rei (Sawa Suzuki), a seasoned dominatrix and aspiring theatre actor who spends her free time rehearsing with a troupe that blurs the line between the stage and the bedroom. At the terminus of the Japanese Bubble era, brilliantly evoked here by neon-lit streets and chic interiors, both women bring us into their nocturnal orbit: a life dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure, camaraderie and the joys of hanging out in the thriving, horny districts of Shinjuku and Shibuya.Â
Marketed in some territories as a sequel to Ryu Murakami’s moody Tokyo Decadence (1992), Banmei Takahashi’s A New Love in Tokyo unfolds as its tonal opposite: less a somber sexploitation film than an unexpectedly sex-positive workplace comedy. Based on a book of essays by Kei Shimamoto and Nobuyoshi Araki that brings the reader into a bustling erotic underworld, the film is also notable for featuring the cult photographer as one of its key collaborator. A glimpse into a bygone era of Japanese eroticism, A New Love in Tokyo provided pink film, V-cinema and Director’s Company veteran Banmei Takahashi (Door, Door II) with a bridge towards a broader range of human experience and pathos, a culmination, a climax of sorts.