Cuffs – The Lost Virgin (2002)

Directed by: Toshiki Sato | 71 minutes | drama, eroticism | Actors: Nikki Sasaki, Taishi Matsunaga, Chika Saito, Asami Sakura

Eroticism and art house go well together. Only, does it get you excited too? Sometimes a little, but it’s clearly not the only purpose of this film, quite the contrary. This drama is far too realistic for that. It just shows very clearly how ‘ordinary’ and selfish or empty sex can be. So no fuss, no beautiful places for the sake of beauty. Not that no attention has been paid to the design and camera work, on the contrary.

The images are full, real metropolitan Japanese, but not haunted. The storytelling style is calm and straightforward. Not too many words are wasted on all kinds of explanations, in fact, the characters prefer to be silent than to say what they really feel, especially for each other, or they just have a nice sex. Does it look familiar to anyone? In any case, it gives a nice tension to the whole, but also makes it a bit sad. Because no, this film is not cheerful, which shows people who do not know how to see this life from the best side and seem unable to admit any happiness, or to enjoy what they do have.

This relatively unknown film by Toshiki Sato is one of the latest in a series of typical Japanese pink films. A 1960s film genre that he revived in the 1990s. By the way, it’s not about gays, which you might expect due to the pink designation. It deals with the difficult sides of love, relationships and sexuality, with an emphasis on the latter. Sato’s past as a real porn director shines through here. A branch of the film industry in which he apparently felt at home, although he turned out to have too much talent as a storyteller and cinematographer to get stuck in it.

Over the years, a kind of dogma developed around shooting pink movies. In addition to the rules that already applied under Japanese censorship (for example, a private part should never be in the picture and not even pubic hair), a pink film must contain a certain minimum of sex scenes, it must not last much longer than an hour, it must be filmed in 16mm or 35mm, within a week and with a very limited budget. This is how this genre actually developed into an art form.

And that is easy to see. ‘Cuffs’ is one of Sato’s last pink films and perhaps the last. It is a fine, independent, idiosyncratic and realistic film by a talented filmmaker, who may not make you happy about life, but it does make you happy about filmmaking. Because it also shows that with talent and vision a lot is possible in film without it having to be flat or empty, let alone cost a lot.