Woods are Wet

If looking to expand on a burgeoning genre (if you can call it a genre, but such language is used to describe pre-code films, so...), in this case Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno series of films, where else would you go but the Marquis de Sade? If so, then considering there had been at least two previous recent adaptations, why not add a further version of Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue? If making money for Jesus Franco, why not for director Tatsumi Kumashiro in 1973, only updated to Taisho Japan as Woods are Wet?  

Fleeing an unfair accusation of murdering her mistress, Sachiko (Hiroko Isayama), is picked up on the road by wealthy lady, Yoko (Rie Nakagawa), and taken to the mountain hotel owned by her husband, Ryunosuke (Hatsuo Yamaya), only to find herself somewhere worse than she could have imagined...

The opening is a surprisingly effective and delicately filmed series of scenes. Sachiko’s story is set up with simplicity almost in the manner of  a Fukasaku yakuza movie. The use of shakuhachi flutes and the straightforward nature of the filmmaking creates an almost elegant tone. It introduces an intimacy, with Yoko’s insinuating voice and apparent vulnerability, trusting that this young woman she meets may be her savior from her husband for reasons initially obscure. This setup powers the film, because it’s understated, often visually elegant, situating of the narrative and the setting up of Sachiko’s character and the apparent dilemma of Yoko opens the floodgates for what madness that then transpires.  

Anyone with a passing knowledge of Justine will have a concept of what will occur and so there are no surprises in store in the sense that we know that Sachiko is going to find herself in a psycho-sexual nightmare (after all, “sadism” was derived from de Sade) but the form that this takes, well, it is truly remarkable. 

Why remarkable? in part because of what it shows, it’s true Sadian horror, but also because you recognise that the film is not trying to show sex, to go in for titillation; it’s aims are higher. Whereas the failed experiment that was Blonde Animal just tries to show sex and nothing else, Woods are Wet does something very, very deeply different. The style, with the dark lighting, the almost lack of titillating nudity throughout, regardless of what is being shown; the sheer unadulterated ability for the film to engage and descend into the mind of characters that are truly amoral, that live for their own alien pleasures and have no need to justify them, this is where the film goes and does so in scenes that transcend what you might see in the ero goru nansensu films of Teruo Ishii ; Ryunosuke and Yoko essentially truly Sadian characters.

The culmination of the film, after the effective build-up, is truly madness, but perhaps brilliant and carefully thought-out madness. Kumashiro as writer and director conjurers a sequence that is hard to describe, define and perhaps I should not even try. It is in counterpoint to the opening of the film, and feels right... it is not right, I hasten to add, but it is right in how it shows the characters: in the context of the film, all is as it should be, as awful and as absurd as it is. As we start to understand who and what husband and wife Ryunosuke and Yoko are, the sequence could and should play out in no other way. Again it is how this is treated, the awfulness of it, yet the absurdity of it, too that intrigues.

The resultant acts are not eroticised, but used more like a crazed political statement of how power can be used and abused with abandon. The blood-soaked sexual lunatic nature of it all is almost perfectly pitched, and curiously sexually reluctantly shot (and that is ignoring the black bars hiding, as Monty Python would have put it, the naughty bits). It always feels a cop out to write it, but this is the kind of moment in cinema which I think is best not discussed in too much detail but should be experienced, because it is only through that experience that you can really begin to understand it. It is the moment where the film most fully leans into the politics and the absurdity and embraces both to disturbing and surreal ends, and its utter commitment to it, its abandonment to the interior logic of its lead characters, you could argue has an almost heroic aspect to it. But only because if anything as noted here the erotically charged aspects are undercut, the possible softcore nonsense is thrown out like the baby with the bathwater, it focuses on the sheer crazed madness and control by those who believe they have a right to power for their own means, and their means have no moral centre because for them morality is a concept that does not exist: I want it, therefore fuck it, it’s right.

The approach of the film’s narrative also navigates some of the more problematic elements of some Roman Porno and pink films, especially around sexual assault and rape, because of how the film focuses more than you might think on the crazed psychology; there is the lack of obvious titillation, and never going down the route of the tedious leering male you often see in films; also, the film makes no real differentiation on how men or women are treated, everyone is fair game for this mad couple, as long as the game is played to their rules.

The reality is that Woods are Wet starts elegantly, has a moment where it feels like could start start to become a bit trite then goes full on into Sadian absurdist nightmare, and ultimately shows what you can do within the genre, taking it apart, rebuilding it, appearing to be erotic when really undermining the hell out of it. Consider then that often it’s beautifully shot, the images and compositions are elegant (the opening in what seems to be a halfway house is quite beautiful), the performances, too, are intriguing because of how they are right for the film: Hiroko Isayama as Sachiko you could read as being a bit placid, but she is stuck between nightmares, trying to find her moral way (from one horror to the next), doing right even if that happens to serve wrong. Whereas, Ryunosuke is a character that is mad, but very much of a whole, and Hatsuo Yamaya’s performance is absurd in how he manages to capture lunacy of an awful kind. But perhaps best of all is Rie Nakagawa’s Yoko, because she is able to seduce one moment and the next be lost in murderous, lustful insanity and yet be the same singular person.  

If there is a point to this review, it is that this is 65-minutes of truly crazed, Sadian nightmare, transposed to Taisho Japan, which maintains a disturbing edge illustrates how to use a genre to your own purposes. Best experienced cold. Or with a glass of wine or ten.