Tokyo Decadence – Topazu (1992)

Directed by: Ryu Murakami | 113 minutes | drama, eroticism | Actors: Miho Nikaido, Sayoko Amano, Tenmei Kano, Kan Mikami, Masahiko Shimada, Yayoi Kusama, Chie Sema

With a title like ‘Tokyo Decadence’ and a woman in kinky lingerie on the DVD cover or movie poster, the viewer logically gets certain expectations about the movie in question. It will again be an exploitative film full of sex and without too much content. However, this is only true to a certain extent. Because if you also know that the writer and director of the film – Ryu Murakami – was responsible, among other things, for the seemingly perverse but very captivating and dramatically effective ‘Audition’ by Takashi Miike, then you can expect that the shocking or “flat” form might actually have meaning. This is indeed the case in ‘Tokyo Decadence’, a sort of SM variant of Alice in Wonderland.

For most of the film, the viewer is watching various types of bizarre sexual role-playing games, starring rich, decadent men (and women). Dominatrix Saki has a nice explanation for this behavior of these wealthy Japanese: Japan is rich but does not know how to deal with it, and therefore, out of a sense of shame, they enter this bizarre, sexual, and painful world. Saki, in turn, can take advantage of these growing masochistic needs of Japanese men through her submissive role-playing games. To the main character Ai (Miho Nikaido) she initially pretends that she herself is not bothered by anything and has her head firmly on her shoulders, but this turns out to be an illusion. She is heavily under the influence of pills and cocaine, and makes a fatalistic impression. So women don’t have much less trouble than the crazy men in this movie, and it’s this hostile, desolate world in which Ai must survive and in which she even tries to find love.

Without Ai’s point of view, ‘Tokyo Decadence’ would have simply been a meaningless sequence of SM scenes: call girls’ visits to their demanding clients. However, Ai’s presence puts everything into interesting context and makes the whole situation personal and extra grim. An almost tangible clash takes place between the innocent, naive world, and the grimy underworld of drugs, depression, sex, and violence. Murakami effectively places the viewer in the shoes of the inexperienced call girl Ai, who does not belong in the world presented here at all. Like Dirk Diggler in ‘Boogie Nights’, she’s found that she doesn’t really have a talent for anything outside the sex industry, but unlike Diggler, she doesn’t grasp her potential as an SM call girl – which she says she has – with enthusiasm. . She doesn’t like what she has to do. She gets injected, has to walk on all fours with an inserted vibrator, strangle a customer, play a corpse being raped, and pee in a tub after being fingered for a customer to drink later. Shy and wide-eyed, she undergoes or observes everything and the viewer feels for her. He feels lost and threatened with her in this strange world.

Ai’s redemption could be a client who was once sweet to her, but has since married someone else. She still loves him and has the quiet hope that things will turn out all right. As a viewer you wish her all the happiness in the world, also because hope for humanity as a whole could be drawn from this. That all is not lost, and that love and healthy relationships are just possible. The viewer wants it for Ai – which means “love” – but also for themselves.

Murakami’s solution is, compared to what came before, a bit too symbolic and dream-like, but it is consistent with the film’s quality as a dark, modern fairy tale. Still, a more realistic approach might have been more satisfying. The film also remains very episodic, which, despite the character of parable, stands in the way of a certain depth. For example, it is not entirely clear what effect each individual episode has on Ai’s development. She undergoes everything in the same, timid way, and the viewer has to fill in for himself what meaning could be in the behavior of the customers.

‘Tokyo Decadence’ provides an interesting glimpse into a bizarre world, and has found the ideal guide in Ai. The film does not aimlessly fire sex scenes at the viewer, but seems to actually have something to say. It is certainly not an easy, but certainly a memorable film.