Directed by Meike Mitsuru, ‘The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai’ belongs to the genre known as ‘Pink Film’, another label for what is ultimately soft core pornography. The film suffered during production, running over schedule and over budget. With its initial small release in the pink cinema circuit in Japan in 2003, subsequent years saw the rise of a steady underground following with several invitations to festivals in Europe and America resulting in a theatrical release in New York’s Cinema Village. Although reviews were far from enthusiastic, they at least appeared to be indulgent of the films seemingly preposterous premise. The New York Times describes the film as a ‘clutter of soft-core political parody, hard-core narrative nonsense, breezy sexism, junky visuals and penny-ante surrealism’. The film tells the story of Sachiko Hanai, a call girl, who unfortunately finds herself caught up in an argument between a North Korean and a Middle Eastern man one evening in a coffee shop. Sachiko escapes from the situation only to find herself with a bullet lodged in her forehead. Instead of death, the discharged projectile appears to imbue or rather unlock the floodgates of intellectualism within her. Besides from her new found ability to quote the likes of Aristotle, Kant and Descartes (to name a few) she finds herself in the possession of a phallic shaped container housing a cloned finger belonging to George W. Bush. When she is not suffering from telepathic molestation from the former US president or physical molestation from his cloned finger (which he is seemingly able to control at will) she spends her time naked and in the throws of sexual endeavour whilst debating Nietzsche’ s ideas on power and Chomsky’s views on foreign policy. As ludicrous as the films synopsis may sound, it is exactly this apparent so-called ‘penny-ante surrealism’ thats makes for such a fertile base to begin dissection. Read More »
