Kaze ni Nureta Onna (Wet Woman in the Wind)

Viewing Akihiko Shiota’s Roman Porno Kaze ni Nureta Onna (Wet Woman in the Wind) is like watching two different films: initially a quirky art house piece, it then morphs into inventive erotica. Lacking x-rated detail it is classified as soft porn, but the narrative contains all the prototypal Debbie Does Dallas elements, from the generic female “love” noises and canned ecstatic facial expressions – designed for a male audience – to the lengthy scenes of copulation in the second half of the movie.                                         

Kosuke (Tasuku Nagaoka) is a Tokyo playwright and former playboy who is avoiding women and living alone in the forest in search of wisdom. He meets Shiori (Yuki Mamiya) who doggedly though erratically pursues him. The dance between the duo is wild and humorous, while relationships with other characters create a medley of confusion. Tongue-in-cheek comedy underlies action and interactions and romantic and poetic moments lend texture to the film. At a point and thereafter the plot evolves to sex.

Covering the spectrum of pairings, included is a threesome, two women, one woman with several men – even the tentative, minimal dare of a “hostile” homoerotic kiss. True to mood, sex scenes are eccentric, with sado-masochistic fights and crazy displays of pugnacity. Shiori pops her body through the roof of Kosuke’s shack while in flagrante, her body mimicking a phallus, simulating intercourse. The pair’s lovemaking is so all consuming they cannot stop to eat, and have their meals in conjunction with their coupling.

Female characters are aggressive and insatiable while the men are often passive, even resistant. Though such assertive passion may be a male porno fantasy – providing she eventually succumbs and submits – here it reaches further into feminist territory with a show of woman power. Yet just as Shiota does not make more of a male on male kiss than that of a brief cameo, neither does he risk dampening virile viewer enthusiasm by veering too far from standard porn plot lines and allowing natural rather than two-dimensional expressions of women’s sexuality. Instead we see overdone scripted coital screaming, and even borderline disturbing quasi-rape scenes.

Restraint keeps the movie from crossing the line to more innovative material in which sex is a vehicle for the narrative rather that the reverse. However, with good acting and simple but effective camera work, Kaze ni Nureta Onna is campy, intriguing and funny.

Catherine Sedgwick

Kaze ni Nureta Onna (Wet Woman in the Wind) is released in select cinemas on 3^rd November 2017.

Watch the trailer for Kaze ni Nureta Onna (Wet Woman in the Wind) here: