is a 1973

1973 in film

The year 1973 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*The Marx Brothers' Zeppo Marx divorces his second wife, Barbara Blakely. Blakely would later marry actor/singer Frank Sinatra....

 Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese film in Nikkatsu

Nikkatsu

is a Japanese entertainment company well known for its film and television productions. It is Japan's oldest major movie studio. The name Nikkatsu is an abbreviation of Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally "Japan Cinematograph Company".-History:...

's Roman porno series, directed by Tatsumi Kumashiro

Tatsumi Kumashiro

was a Japanese film director best known for his critically acclaimed, award-winning Roman Porno films, such as Ichijo's Wet Lust and The Woman with Red Hair...

 and starring Rie Nakagawa. Alternate titles for the film include Twisted Path of Youth, Twisted Path of Love, and Lovers and Wet Sands. In 1999 the mainstream Japanese film journal Kinema Junpo

Kinema Junpo

, commonly called , is a Japanese film magazine which began publication in July 1919. The magazine was founded by a group of four students, including Saburō Tanaka, at the Tokyo Institute of Technology . In that first month, it was published three times on days with a "1" in them. These first three...

named it as one of the best Japanese films of the 20th century.

Synopsis

Katsu, a young man who has spent five years drifting around Japan, returns to his coastal village hometown hoping to restart his life. Though the villagers recognize him, he refuses to admit to his past identity. He sets about disrupting social conventions and engaging in sexual and violent affronts to decorum. A local girl befriends him.

Cast

• Rie Nakagawa: Yoko
• Tetsu Ōe: Katsu
• Koichi Hori: Mitsuo
• Kunio Shimizu: Miura
• Moeko Ezawa: Yoshie
• Chiro Kei: Sachiko

Critical appraisal

In their Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films, the Weissers point out that while Kumashiro's The Woman with Red Hair (1979) is rightly praised as a masterpiece of softcore porn, Lovers Are Wet is not a lesser work, writing, "Both films are equally important in shaping Japan's lucrative pinku eiga market."

In his Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema, Jasper Sharp writes that, like Woods are Wet and The World of Geisha

The World of Geisha

aka A Man and a Woman Behind the Fusuma Screen is a 1973 Japanese film in Nikkatsu's Roman porno series, directed by Tatsumi Kumashiro and starring Junko Miyashita...

(both 1973), Lovers Are Wet is one of Kumashiro's indictments of the hypocrisy of censorship. As in these other films, Kumashiro uses the censors' tools purposely to ridicule the practice. In a scene in which a group of people play nude leapfrog on a beach, Kumashiro hides the actors' genitals by scratching the surface of the film, "creating a bizarre writhing spaghetti of lines." Film historian Donald Richie

Donald Richie

Donald Richie is an American-born author who has written about the Japanese people and Japanese cinema. Although he considers himself only a writer, Richie has directed many experimental films, the first when he was 17...

 pointed out that the Japanese censors had used this method on nude audience members in the film Woodstock

Woodstock (film)

Woodstock is a 1970 American documentary on the Woodstock Festival that took place in August 1969 at Bethel in New York. Entertainment Weekly called this film the benchmark of concert movies and one of the most entertaining documentaries ever made...

(1970). While these non-erotic nudes passed unnoticed in countries without such censorship, Richie notes of the Japanese version, "When the film was projected the distant strolling couples consequently seemed girdled with fireworks. Though this called instant attention to what the censors were presumably attempting to hide, the letter of the law had been observed and this result satisfies all censors everywhere."

Availability

Lovers Are Wet was released on DVD in Japan on March 24, 2006, as part of Geneon's third wave of Nikkatsu Roman porno series. On March 23, 2010, Kino International released three Tatsumi Kumashiro

Tatsumi Kumashiro

was a Japanese film director best known for his critically acclaimed, award-winning Roman Porno films, such as Ichijo's Wet Lust and The Woman with Red Hair...

 films on DVD in the U.S. Along with Ichijo's Wet Lust

Ichijo's Wet Lust

aka Ichijo's Wet Desire, Drenched Passion, Sayuri Ichijo: Moist Desire, Following Desire and Sayuri Ichijō: Wet Lust is a 1972 Japanese film in Nikkatsu's Roman porno series, directed by Tatsumi Kumashiro and starring the famous stripper Sayuri Ichijō as herself, and co-starring Kazuko Shirakawa...

(1972) and Yakuza Goddess: Lust and Honor (1973), they released Lovers Are Wet under the title Twisted Path of Love.