Lovers Are Wet

Director: Tatsumi Kumashiro

1973 / 76min / DCP

A young man (Toru Ohe) on the run from the yakuza, doing his best to keep a low profile while doing grunt work for the movie theater specializing in erotic films in the rural seaside town where he was raised, is drawn into oft-disturbing sexual liaisons with the cinema’s unhappily married manager Chizuyu Azami, local Moeko Ezawa, and free-spirited couple Kôichi Hori and Rie Nakagawa. A tour-de-force by Roman porno mainstay Kumashiro, distinguished by finely shaded character studies, dynamic camerawork, self-censorship by Brakhage-esque emulsion-scratching, and a robust sense of the absurd, Lovers are Wet shows just how much was possible within the genre confines of the pink film.