Violent Virgin (1969)

Japan in the 1960s was one of the epicenters of the protest movement in all its guises. The rebellious decade began with the political activism of the younger generation, who did not want to put up with the echoes of the post-war course.A wave of revolutionary sentiments swept over the art sphere, giving impetus to a series of countercultural art movements that responded sensitively to changes in the social climate, and tried to distance themselves from the old patterns Young creators engaged in the field of cinema faced the additional task of competing with large film studios, which since the 1920s have increasingly strengthened the regulation of film production, set increasingly strict conditions for novice directors, not allowing them to go beyond the established censorship limits. However, from the very beginning of the 60s, an independent alternative was born, whose adherents experienced innovative techniques no worse than the popular documentaries at that time. The main difference was that the acute social themes of their films were expressed by extraordinary means of the erotic genre, which became the most free, dynamic and revolutionary type of Japanese cinema-the avant-garde. The film "The Cruel Virgin" (Gewalt! Gewalt: shojogeba-geba, 1969) was one of the cheapest, but probably the most audaciously metaphorical and surreal of Wakamatsu and Adachi's collaborations. Three women and three men, apparently members of a gang, pull a young couple - Hoshi and Hanako - out of a jeep on a deserted road with their hands and feet tied. Before they are dealt with, the bandits begin to mock them and use sexual violence. As a result, Hoshi and Hanako are naked, and the girl is crucified on the cross. Hoshi manages to escape, and soon the really weird, perverse, and surreal action begins. The line between man and animal is blurred... An apocalyptic wasteland in the foothills of Fujiyama became the setting for the theater of eros and carnage, where biblical symbolism mixed with transgressive sado-maso symbolism. A naked woman crucified on a cross, a man in a woman's nightgown sobbing at her bloody feet in the midst of the yakuza corpses in flames. Pure poetry, not inferior to the perverse fascization of "Salo, or 120 Sodom". The characters here are placed in the space of a boundless desert-a return to the situation of the "natural state". And what remains of a person who has been stripped of all social layers, all the imperatives imposed by the state, family and gender? Aggression, greed, lust: basically, all the standard engines of the inner life of society. Therefore, the leaders cringe to their bosses, the woman easily becomes a rapist, and the victim with pleasure turns into a domineering tyrant.