Ai (Miho Nikaido) is a young woman working as a prostitute specializing in S&M. It seems a career at odds with her shy, unassuming nature, as we witness her act out various perverse fantasies for her clients in an almost trance-like state, no evident sense of true pleasure. Ai’s trysts see her come into contact with men who appear equally empty, attempting through whatever means to re-establish some sort of feeling in their lives, numbed by drugs and the hedonism of a society in which they are unmoored from morality. When Ai learns that a former boyfriend, a well-renowned artist working abroad has returned to Japan she sets out to meet him, hoping that this might provide some closure for her.
Ryu Murakami, author of “Audition” and “Piercing”, directs this thriller based on his own novel, offering us a candid look at the sordid underbelly of Japanese society in the early nineties. The film’s pacing is slow, with an early scene in which Ai is hired by a gangster to perform various humiliating acts, before finally inviting his wife to have sex in front of her, creating a sense of oppressive claustrophobia, allowing us to fully sympathise with our protagonist. We learn little about either character, besides establishing the power dynamic, and as the loveless, sado-masochistic acts drag on long after any frisson of eroticism has faded we are left feeling hollow. For a film that includes so much nudity, sex and drug use, the film maintains this sensation of absolute numbness when it comes to the act of sex. We are drawn into the mundanity of Ai’s profession, and the lack of any true feeling existing beneath the hyper-eroticised exterior. The men are shown to be both cruel and pathetic, childish caricatures acting on pure lust. The film features several more ambiguous elements, such as Ai’s visit to a fortune-teller, who gives her three cryptic pieces of advice; and events later in the film when Ai meets a singer, which at first appears to be some kind of delusion. Miho Nikaido’s performance as the central character is what holds the film together, as we sympathise with her predicament; see the various revelations she makes about society and human relations; and hope that she finally finds whatever it is she is looking for. The film’s methodical pacing, focussing on this stunning performance, along with the score by Ryuichi Sakamoto, lends the film an artistic air that might seem at odds with the plot of S&M and drug-taking. But it is this juxtaposition, showing us acts which would usually excite to be at best mildly interesting diversions, that highlights the disconnect the characters are feeling. In a world in which anything is possible, they have become jaded and lost any sense of pleasure.
“Tokyo Decadence” shows us a world that is bleak in its outlook. The male characters are largely callous, childish, manifestations of their basest desires for lust and power, while the women are forced to service them. It is this stark realisation that we may be little more than our animal instincts, that prompts Ai to search for more. A dominatrix later tells her than the problem with men is that they have money but no pride. They are living a hedonistic, drug-fuelled, sex-obsessed existence, and unable to develop as humans. Ai is trapped in a similarly depressed, anomic state having lost a meaningful relationship and fallen into meaningless sex-work. In a post-credits sequence we are offered a glimmer of hope as it appears that Ai has finally taken ownership over her own life, though we are left to wonder to what extent she has control of her situation. A curious film that acts as a character study of a women attempting to come to terms with her life following a break-up and to understand the darker side of human nature, while striving to hold on to whatever good might be left in the world.
