The Japanese Wife Next Door (2004, Review)

Director: Yutaka Ikejima
Cast: Reiko Yamaguchi, Akane Yazaki, Kaoru Akitsu, Naohiro Hirakawa, Kikujiro Honda, Koji Makimura
Pink Eiga / Not Rated / NTSC Region 1 / Widescreen / Japanese Language with English subtitles / 61 Minutes.

I would consider myself a nymphomaniac. I love sex, who in their right mind doesn't? So, when I heard of a movie called The Japanese Wife Next Door and the lead female character is a sex-crazed nymphomaniac who seduces her husband's entire family, I couldn't resist not checking it out! There were some expectations that I was expecting beyond the buckoos of sex I was about to visually endure; being a movie buff, I need a good plot, whether it is porn or an underground indie project. Porn enthusiasts will probably shoot back and say, "why do you need a plot in porn? you're a sick fuck!" Indeed, I am a sick fuck - I can't sit around for 3 hours watching other people...well...fuck. While The Japanese Wife Next Door did produce an "erectifying" result, there was just a sense of childlike objectivity and personality that made this raunchy comedy more creepy than it did sensually funny.

Takashi is a lonely business man who decides to try and meet new women months after getting out of a four year relationship. He meets two women, Sakura and Ryoto, and finds that he likes them both, but when Sakura takes charge and leads him back to her hotel room for some high-time, romping action, Takashi makes his decision that leads him down the Sakura path. Unaware to Takashi is the fact that Sakure is a nymphomaniac; a person who has an insanely high amount of sex drive. This breaks down Takashi so much that he has become impotent, making Sakura sexually frustrated and forcing her to take bedroom action with those who are close to Takashi - his family.

The Japanese Wife Next Door is an odd piece of lewd cinema. In fact, it breaks quite a few conventional rules regarding how a film should be conducted. That brings up the question, can this film be considered vanguard? There are portions of this vanguardesqe feature that appeal to me. During scenes, the actors express their concerns and wants directly into the camera as if turning to the audience. The whole situation comes off as a sort of stage play, overly expressing their feelings and their actions to make their act more entertaining. There were portions that did not appeal to me, sadly enough. During the sex scenes, which are very silhouette and graphic, were blurred out. Why blur it out? Is it for censorship purposes? The blurring does take away from the satisfaction of the in-your-face sex. I felt like I was 10-years-old again, trying to catch brief glances of silhouettes through the snowy TV screens of the pay-per-view adult channels.

Now, I'm not condemning the film because of said concerns. I actually thought the film was quite ingenious and disturbing. A single woman manages to turn a house full of upstanding people into sex-crazed maniacs! The sickly grandfather, the morally good of character father and the uptight sister fall to our very raw basic instinct - hot and sweaty sex of all the kinds! The ending scene is the most disturbing, yet you find yourself not pulling away, not shielding your eyes and not making a single breath. The horrors of what our protagonist goes through is quite exaggerated but you feel for him none-the-less as he is forced into his ill-fated, and quite literally fucked, destiny.

Pink Eiga's The Japanese Wife Next Door is an absolute delight. Expect many, if not all, sexual positions and expect to see fake, at least I think it's fake, cum being spewed and nearly swallowed. I can never tell if the actors in the Pink Eiga releases are only acting or actually playing out the part. Some scenes look authentic and some look staged, either way it is nice to see strong graphic content with a storyline hit retail shelves and you don't have to be spammed with porn messages. Check out The Japanese Wife Next Door today as it will take you from cleanliness to dirtiness in 60 minutes flat!