DVD Artwork
A couple o’ weeks back I gave ya scumbags my take on Takashi Ishii’s modern-pinku sleaze-sterpiece, Flower and Snake (a film that has been made and re-made in Japan since the 70s), and promised you a follow-up on the sequel, Flower and Snake 2. Well, it’s about time I make good and give ya the low-down on this one. Is it as strong as the original 2004 film? Does it measure high on the sicko-scale? Does Asian fire-cracker Aya Sugimoto still look fuckin’ smokin’ all roped-up butt-nekkid? (Well – that one should be a no-brainer)…
The plot of Flower and Snake 2 (like many Japanese film sequels) has zero to do with the original. Aya Sugimoto reprises her role as a closet freaky-deaky named Shizuko, and she still gets disrobed a lot, tied-up a lot, and humiliated/turned-on a lot – but that’s where the similarities pretty much end. Part Deux is quite a bit more subdued and methodical than the first, at least in the beginning, and though still pretty chock-full of soft-core perversion, focuses a bit more on plot than the original. Takashi Ishii helms the director’s chair again for this entry, and the screenplay is likewise again inked by proliferant pinku pensmith, Oniroku Dan.
Takayoshi Tooyama (Jo Shishido) is an old bastard who can’t get it up for his hot piece-of-ass wife, Shizuko (Ms. Sugimoto, of course…), and only gets his kicks from looking at pics of his wife in compromising and sexy situations. In his quest to get what little bit of blood-pumping into his shriveled peter that he can, Takayoshi sets his wife up for a profusion of sexually-fueled abasements and awakenings, all brilliantly masterminded to implement his ultimate plan of voyeuristic ecstasy.
To set the wheels in motion, the old-man sends Shizuko to Paris, where she is to meet with a young, alcoholic, incestuous, erotica painting prodigy, Ryosuke (Kenichi Endo, who incidentally played one of the Yakuza-thugs in the original 2004 film), in order to commission a piece. Problem is, Ryosuke seems to be suffering from a long bout of painters-block, and insists that Shizuko be his “muse” for what he promises to be his best work ever. Shizuko reluctantly agrees, hoping to fulfill what she believes to be her husband’s wishes, and allows herself to be tied-up and contorted in all sorts of complicated and sexy ways. The sexual-tension eventually envelopes the artist and his subject, and of course they’re relationship takes on an extracurricular slant.
After Ryosuke completes his “masterpiece”, his sister (and sometimes sexual-partner), Sayoko (played by Fujiko, who was also the daughter in Takashi Miike’s Visitor Q, no newcomer to incest-themed films…), petitions Shizuko to allow her to sell the painting on the black-market (for some convoluted reason). Shizuko agrees, and she and Sayako head off to an elite “party” (which is reminiscent of the snuff/sex theater in the first Flower and Snake, and also harkens to Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, which both Flower and Snake films have been compared to as well) where fantasies are auctioned off to the highest bidder.
At the auction, several erotic prints are on the block, which Shizuko claims are fake due to the fact that she happens to be carrying Ryosuke’s original painting. This claim is disproven (more set-up that ties into the overall storyline), and Shizuko is forced to perform various sexual positions in front of the crowd of masked onlookers as a form of punishment.
After experiencing some relatively severe humiliation at the auction, Shizuko and her husband are reunited, and the “twist” in the film is unveiled – revealing the true nature of the experiences that she has been subjected to…
So what did I get from Flower and Snake 2? First and foremost, I didn’t find it quite as strong as Ishii’s original film. That’s not to say that I enjoy it (which I did – quite a bit), but the original was SO well-made, SO well-shot, and SO well-realized (to a hard-core pinku film-fan like myself…) that I had a feeling that a follow-up would never be able to recreate the trashy yet artistic, erotic yet appealingly sleazy atmosphere of the first film. The main issues that I had with this film were the cinematography and the pacing.
The style in which Flower and Snake 2 was shot was a bit more amateurish than the first, and has “grainy” and “shaky” qualities that were either done on purpose as some sort of nod to the older pinku films of years-past, or was due to a smaller budget. Either way, I didn’t find these elements particularly appealing. As far as pacing is concerned, much of the scenes leading up to the “auction” scene a bit slow and weak in comparison to the first. I guess I’m accustomed to the 65-minute Nikkatsu pinku films of the 70s/80s, and expect to be hit hard and fast with the “good-stuff”, and although Flower and Snake 2 did deliver on plenty of soft-core nudity, sex, and shibari-bondage (as would be expected) – the first half of the film felt more like an Asian Skinemax film than a true piece of classic pinku-eiga.
The special-features on the Tokyo Shock release are pretty standard fare: deleted scenes, image gallery, a making-of featurette, etc…nothing extremely notable, but definitely sufficient for a film of this nature.
Even with my minor gripes, Flower and Snake 2 is still a strong piece of Japanese sexploit cinema, and I’m glad that Ishii is still carrying the pinku torch, and still trying to make relevant films in a genre that many outside of Asia probably couldn’t care less about. It confounds me how many exploit fans aren’t aware of the plethora of “golden-era” Japanese exploitation material that is out there if you do a bit of searching for it, and I think that Ishii’s two Flower and Snake films are aimed at those that still care about this important but under-appreciated genre of films. I hope Ishii continues to “carry the torch”, as I’d hate to see these types of films die out.
