The Angel Guts Collection 1 - Angel Guts: Red Classroom

Hopefully you’ll remember Third Window’s excellent 4 Tales of Nami boxset (and if not we reviewed them all!), all directed by Takashi Ishii, based on his manga. So the recent announcement of The Angel Guts Collection was perhaps not as much of a surprise as it could have been, even if it is a very pleasing one. Nevertheless, even if they are based on Ishii’s manga, who could say how the films might play out? 

Let's find out with the first film in the set (though actually the second Angel Guts film to be shot): Angel Guts: Red Classroom.

Porn mag editor, Muraki (Keizo Kanie) is entranced by the face of Nami (Yuki Mizuhara) in a porn film he’s viewing. Quietly obsessed he looks for her and finally finding Nami, Muraki reveals his feelings. Nami is apparently unmoved and pushes him towards an unwanted sexual encounter. Willing to meet him again, Muraki is unable to make the appointment and Nami’s life continues to spiral as Muraki’s obsession with Nami remains unabated years later. 

Though a Nikkatsu Roman Porno, Angel Guts: Red Classroom manages to become something that is stolidly within the genre and yet manages to feel utterly outside of it in the way the best films made by the studio manage to do. The first moments of the film almost had my heart sinking because here was yet another gang rape of a woman, yet the film plays with this narratively, revealing instead this is a film being watched in a room of pornographers and paying guests. It also explains the state of the print: at first the film appears not to be in good shape (as we're watching another film within a film) but once it shifts into the actual narrative we see that the print of Angel Guts: Red Classroom is an excellent transfer. From there the film goes into territory that is hard to discuss because it walks an apparently impossible line from perhaps the most extreme moments of Roman Porno I’ve seen yet without ever seeming for a moment to be gratuitous and boasts some quite remarkable performances. 

Trying to get my head around how this is achieved is not easy, but oddly perhaps also simple. Such is the nature of the film. The screenplay, by director Chusei Sone and Ishii, is one factor. The film introduces the characters of Nami and Muraki that return throughout the Nami series and their relationship, or lack thereof, is the core of the film. Muraki has a view of Nami that is not who or what Nami is. Or is it? There is at least one sliding doors moment where possibly Nami’s life could change. Or could it? More importantly perhaps is that Nami and Muraki both exist as characters, rather than cyphers. Muraki might edit a pornographic magazine but he wants it to be something other than it is – still pornographic but somehow more artistic and extreme than the everyday. He’s a person, doing a job and wanting to do it well. Nami is a damaged person, spiralling down, down, down, in such a way that it made me think of moments in Blue Velvet.  

But then there’s also the small things that matter in how the film feels, such as when we first see Muraki and his crew taking pornographic photos, this is no leering sexualised occupation but the woman who is the target of their attention is treated respectfully, spoken of with affection: it’s a professional environment not some idealised vision of pornography. Not does it go in the other direction, such as Guts of a Virgin where the pornographers are truly vile misogynists and the women who work for them are brainless, sexualised cyphers.  

Being a Roman Porno sex and nudity are understandably front and centre, yet not, yet utterly. Again, often the film is, while not restrained exactly, where it could be crudely lascivious it avoids sex for the sake of it; when it needs to be utterly filthy, taking us beyond what we might expect to see, it does so in a way that exists to draw out characterisation or situations, especially of Nami’s character. Two scenes especially, Nami bringing the salaryman to a love hotel and finally, with her boyfriend-pimp-bar owner at the end, there are moments that are extreme, almost grotesque but necessary – you cannot imagine the film and our understanding of Nami’s psychology without seeing what we do (and those that have seen the film will know what I mean). Other films would allow these scenes to play out as tedious sexualisation, but here Sone is able to to draw out Nami’s psychology, to delve into her mental state through her actions and Yuki Mizuhara as Nami is quite remarkable in these scenes. 

Sone also shoots the film very well, better than we have reason to expect, whether in the formalised framing of an interior or a sexual encounter. The grotesque warping of images in a mirror, the use of furnishing to hide that which is not allowed on screen somehow is always managed such that it has a touch of class to it, a visual understanding of how to use images to both stay within censorship limits (no black bars here but the occasional jump cuts to avoid showing anything they legally cannot) and also again draw into the character’s inner lives and situational feelings. 

Ultimately the film is a tragedy once we understand what has happened to Nami and where her life leads her; but ironically it is also one in which she is often the one in control. When she picks up the working man and takes him to a love hotel, she is the one that is both getting satisfaction (if disturbingly knowing life could have had a different path for her) whereas the man she has picked up, and thinking he’s in for a good time is the one in most distress; he plays the role we often see of the woman in such scenes, out of their depth, wanting to get out, whereas it’s Nami who controls the encounter, who is the most sexually aggressive. Nami is victim and controller. Even down to one of the last moments where we see in another character, though barely glimpsed, in exactly the same situation as that which we know has caused Nami to be where she is, and Nami is apparently complicit in it. It’s disturbing, yet again not gratuitous, and asks questions of us in the audience and refuses to give us easy answers. Nor does the film allow us any easy answers to what unfolds. This is perhaps one of the great strengths of the film; nothing is simplistic for a moment, nothing is just sexualised nonsense, every character we meet seems to have a beating heart, be a person who could walk off the screen and exist in real life. For all you can argue there could be a sliding doors moment in the story, realistically this is an illusion – one in Muraki’s mind – and nothing is easily explained. True, the moment that changes Nami’s life could be argued wasn't inevitable, she could have tried to escape, but all people must make their choices. This attempt to create interior lives for our characters is also seen in Muraki, who though a pornographer is not a bad person as often they are lazily portrayed; though early on in the story he might be in a relationship with one of his models, it is not something you feel he wants, certainly wants less than shes does – noticeably again it is a woman pushing the sexual relationship. He is oddly more in love with art than sex. He is also in love with an idealised version of Nami that might once have existed but perhaps not anymore, perhaps even ever.  

As the films ends in just under 80-minutes, what strikes you is just how vile a film Angel Guts: Red Classroom could have been and how entirely different the reality is. It’s a film I feel like I need to allow to settle down within me, to absorb slowly over time, to think about, to consider and rewatch and one I’ve found very hard to write about because it's the execution of the film and the performances that - in the best way - are hard to describe. These include moments in passing where Yuki Mizuhara as Nami seems to derive sexual pleasure in whatever act it is, yet her expressions convey something different, something lost, uninhibited and wild. It feels beyond acting and getting to the core of the character in a way that feels totally relevant to who Nami is in the film. Later on you see something similar in a moment of a scene which should be either ludicrous or crudely exploitative but instead bleeds into the reality of the character of Nami and it is this ability of the film to really get into the core of who her character is, and who Muraki is, while also treating the sex and nudity as necessary to the narrative, rather than just flesh on display, that elevates Angel Guts: Red Classroom to in many ways to become a remarkable film. It may not be a film for everyone, but for those with eyes to see nuance where it would not normally be, it’s arguably a stunning, deeply surprising piece of filmmaking, if an extreme one to many. It's also a film that sits in the mind, nestles there so that I found myself thinking about it unbidden.

So here we are, one entry into the Angel Guts boxset down and, if Angel Guts: Red Classroom is anything to go by, it’s going to be an unmissable set of films.