| L'AMANT |
 2004 – JapanDirector: Ryuichi Hiroki
- Reviewed by Linda
First of all, I was surprised to find out later that "L'Amant" translates as "The Lover". There is not an ouce or smidgen of love anywhere to be seen in this tale of a teenage girl who whores herself out to three men (brothers, of course) for a year of her life. Based on a popular shojo manga by Naito Yamada, the film wastes no time establishing the plot. High school senior Chikako (Nozomi Andô) shows up at the ridiculously huge house (by Japanese standards at least) of three men. As part of the contract, they do not exchange real names. Chikako refers to the men as A, B, and C; They, in turn, call her Hanako, based on the schoolgirl (or daughter?) that their dying father was sexually obsessed with (???). In a weird "boys sharing their toys" twist, the men have pooled together their savings, in honor of their father, to buy themselves their own Hanako for a year, much like they saved as kids to buy themselves a bike. Huh. Chikako is a stone-faced and emotionless girl that doesn't seem to have a home or social life, beyond a distant mother, and a school friend of hers that she almost forces herself to hang out with occasionally. As the year passes by, with Chikako spending afternoons and evenings with the men, she supposedly learns what real love is, and "becomes a woman" via being treated as an on-demand sex object by the men. Upon her 18th birthday, she is newly mature, and can now go out into the world with her stone-faced expression intact. Despite able (yet tedious and boring) direction, it is hard for me to offer any sort of recommendation to a film that I basically found repulsive in all senses. I found the exploitation of the young woman as icky, and even more so the fact that it perpetuated the idea of Japanese men being sexually predatory on underage schoolgirls. (It made me think of a poster I saw in the Tokyo underground when I visited Japan a few years back. The picture showed an innocent-looking teenage girl in her schoolgirl outfit on the train, with a statement above that my Japanese friend translated as "Don't Touch!") Chikako is repeatedy used sexually by the men, sexually humiliated in other scenes, and even raped by a stranger (technically, A, B, and C's using of her is never considered rape, since she willingly entered the contract). I read an article online that said that the film is a depiction of male impotence. Despite "owning" her, the men never seem to have a grasp on Chikako, and she supposedly grows and matures, while the men regress into emotional messes by the end. The only sympathetic male in the film is a teenage boy, who is reduced to tears when he learns of the world of adult men. Women don't fare any better, as they are either innocent and clueless (the mother and the friend), or jaded and soulless (Chikako). L'Amant is a bleak and upleasant depiction of sexuality, adulthood, and the interaction between men and women. And to all of that, I say, "Yuck." |
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