More Sexploitation

Street of Joy

directed by Tatsumi Kumashiro

One is lead to expect great things from Street of Joy, expecially when it earned Tatsumi Kumashiro the distinction of Japan's Best Director for 1975.

Unfortunately it is difficult to take his "uninhibited look at prostitution in Japan" even remotely seriously. The fault is not his subject matter (the lives of five prostitutes in a brothel) nor his film-making skills — the camera work is excellent; rather his choice of what should be portrayed so emphatically on the screen.

Instead of building on a well-written script that most directors could have a field-day over, Kumashiro sought to de-emphasise the protagonists' point of view with his exceptionally long takes of the women at their work accompanied by a soundtrack of loud sensual noises. What could have been a sympathetic insight into the lives of hard-working whores is reduced to a marathon of fornication.

The sub-plots that relate love and marriage, youth and old-age to the profession, are depicted in a very witty manner, but are distressingly superficial. For the film's relatively short running time, such episodes only amounted to brief insignificant interludes.

The fact that there was a small migration of the Festival audience to the Exit would in all likelihood be Kumashiro's least worry. His sex ploited film assures commercial success (which it has enjoyed in Japan and Europe). It is simply distressing that the Japanese Film Industry honoured him for it. Like the comic strips inter spliced within the film, Street of Joy is a very sad joke.

Kevin John Young