Synopsis
A submissive hooker goes about her trade, suffering abuse at the hands of Japanese salarymen and Yakuza types. She's unhappy about her work, and is apparently trying to find some sort of appeasement for the fact that her lover has married.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Miho NikaidoAi
- Sayoko AmanoSaki
- Tenmei KanoIshioka Sato
- Kan MikamiTopazu
- Masahiko ShimadaSuzuki
- Yayoi KusamaFortune Teller
- Chie SemaOpera Woman
Recommendations
- 90
Los Angeles Times
Tokyo Decadence is likely to stay with you long after the theater lights come up. - 78
Austin Chronicle
Whether or not Murakami intended this rambling, erotic nightmare as a metaphor for modern-day Japan is a question I'm not going to get into here, but the fact remains, Tokyo Decadence is a powerful, disturbing film, teeming with episodes of rampant passion, abuse, and beauty. - 63
ReelViews
Tokyo Decadence will appeal to only a select few. The movie is rated NC-17 for a reason -- it doesn't pull any punches, and there's virtually nothing it won't risk putting on screen. Those who take a chance on this film may be shocked by what it offers, but, regardless of their opinion of the story, the overall experience won't soon be forgotten. - 50
San Francisco Chronicle
Tokyo Decadence is not an action picture, blue or otherwise. Murakami almost batters you with his slow, deliberate style, and in the end the film ventures into puzzling bravura sequences that seem hard to grasp for someone outside Japanese culture. Throughout, Murakami subtly accompanies his work with strains from the introduction to an aria from Verdi's ''Don Carlo'' where the aggrieved King Philip sings ''she never loved me.'' [18 June 1993, p.C12] - 40
BBC
Almost entirely free of context or comment, it’s like watching a grim, sordid and in fact rather dull porno flick, where the director documents the sexual demands of a number of ‘imaginative’ businessmen and then – unlike the prostitute herself – does nothing with them. - 40
The New York Times
Tokyo Decadence is much better at evoking a creepy urban sophistication than at revealing character or telling a story. - 40
The Observer (UK)
This is not, by any standard, entertainment. It is, from time to time, almost too agonising to watch: but at least, in its unrelenting, occasionally powerful way, it shows how sex and violence can sometimes, in their capacity for degradation, be brothers under the crawly skin. - 30
TV Guide Magazine
A few moments of black comedy and some pointed jabs at contemporary Japanese society cannot redeem this plotless, graphically gruesome ordeal.
