Cruel Story of Youth

Nagisa Ôshima’s breakthrough portrait of alienated youth is a stinging castigation of an indolent, self-indulgent youth culture.

This second feature by the Japanese cinema-insurgent Nagisa Ôshima (In the Realm of the Senses, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence) galvanised its home-turf with its topsy-turvy directorial dexterity and stinging castigation of an indolent, self-indulgent youth culture reposing on the eve of the turbulent 1960s. When high-schooler Makoto is saved from the advances of a lecherous middle-aged man by uni student Kiyoshi, the pair embark on a fits-and-starts affair that finally settles into a sexually extortionary, mutually exploitative dependency that promises to spell their relationship’s doom.