Original Title: Môju
Directed by Yasuzu Masumura
Written by Yoshio Shirasaka (based on the story by Rampo Edogawa)
Cast: Eiji Funakoshi, Mako Midori and Noriko Sengoku.
Runtime: 90 min.
Japan, 1969

Here’s a curious little pleasure from a japanese cult master. An intense study on body, intimacy and lunacy all together in a very light S&M form that never takes itself too seriously; it’s deep alright but it’s more poetic than barbarian.

Michio is a blind sculptor that intends to create his utter masterpiece, a sculpture piece for the blind. Helped by his mother he kidnaps a beautiful model, Aki, in an attempt of keeping her locked in his studio to serve as his muse.

Aki is a very spoiled girl and tries everything to escape but in the end the couple bond in a very carnal way, in an intense and obsessive relation that culminates with the total embrace of body and soul.

The wharehouse that serves as the studio is decorated with oversized female body parts, breasts, legs and the whole, and in the middle (where most of the action takes part) are two huge headless female sculptures. This only adds to the perfect claustrophobic atmosphere that the movie emanates. Beautiful!

This is truly a pure low budget underdog. More than a mere example or exercise, Blind Beast is carefully mastered, even if sometimes things get a little too silly to be true as the dialogs are too deep and too poetic for a casual viewer. You can reach a boiling point where you just want to watch the plot and shut up the two leading characters but this only adds to the strangeness of the whole thing and can become quite enjoyable.

Masumura never uses any kind of close ups, except in some minor details of the beautiful artist’s studio, it’s quite engaging to see this intimate tale told in a cold and detached form, at least on the surface because the characters are too intense and the tight studio where most of the movie is set creates a bizarre claustrophobic sense of pleasure. The viewer is personified in the model Aki – the only one who’s not insane (at least in the beggining) and you get along the movie like Aki does – trying to get away from this nightmare first by force, then by using psychological treaths, then slowly beggining to realise its fate and resiging and giving up to pleasure.

But it’s more than pleasure, take note. It’s way deeper than that as Aki starts to get fondness for the emotionally weak Micho she too begins to love him in a twisted way – like he does to her. It’s a kind of metaphor for the deranged relationships of our time.

The actors, specially Shirasaka (who plays the blind beast) give outstanding performances, carefully angled by truly beautiful shots. It’s poetry in motion.

This movie was made in 1969, and it shows; the avant-garde experiments in colour and form are what make this utterly enjoyable, even if the story tends to become too insane for most, and the last half of the film tends to develop slowly but it’s an intense experience that shall not be ignored by those seeking desperate and intense feelings. And, on a side note, this is a sexual story told without a hint of sex or nudity. Remarkable. And still remains fresh nowadays.

Heartbreak Score: