Fantastic Fest 2008

Check out all the films in this year's Pink Retrospective. Click here for a show listing.

After the death of his son, aging dairy farmer Shukichi is left to run his farmstead with only his young daughter-in-law Noriko to help. Struggling under the onset of senility, when his prize heifer Hanako also passes away, it is left to Noriko to cushion him from the emotional shock. Every morning as the sun begins to rise, she creeps off to the cowshed, disrobes and gets down on all fours in anticipation of her father-in-law's arrival with the milking pail.

So addled by old age is Shukichi that he is unable to tell the difference. This natural state of affairs soon falls under threat, however, when his scheming daughter turns up from the big city plotting to grab the land all for herself, claiming that her father is in no fit mental state to look after a farm. Given the strange events she witnesses in the milking shed, there's few who will argue...

An erotic film for those rough and ready types who don't mind getting their hands dirty, it relocates us far from the standard anonymous suburban environs of most modern-day pink movies to give us a glimpse at life in Japan's rural hinterlands. What director Goto has done here, to quote Spinal Tap, is to "take a sophisticated view of sex by putting it on a farm". Well, one might laugh, but cast and crew alike all strive to keep matters as straight-faced as the far-fetched premise allows, and even more surprisingly, they just about get away with it. The rural sex movie is not a particularly well-ploughed furrow, but though Goto's film occasionally teat-ers on the ridiculous, it is nonetheless outstanding in its field, and quite unlike any udder. (Jasper Sharp)

This screening courtesy of www.pinkeiga.com.

Jasper Sharp, pink film scholar and author of the new Fab Press book "Behind The Pink Curtain - The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema" will be in attendance to introduce the film. Expect to learn a lot about this shadow world of Japanese film culture.

Very special thanks to Marc Walkow of Outcast Cinema for crucial programming and logistical assistance.