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I.K.U.

I.K.U. (2000) Movie Poster
Japan  •    •  90m  •    •  Directed by: Shu Lea Cheang.  •  Starring: Aja, Akira, Miho Ariga, Myuu Asô, Akechi Denki, Emi, Margarette, Mash, Zachery Nataf, Yumeko Sasaki, Ayumu Tokitô, Tsousie, Etsuyo Tsuchida..
       This innovative Japanese production depicts a world where sex may soon be deemed obsolete by the GENOM Corporation, which develops a machine capable of sexually satisfying the user by connecting a computer directly to the brain. In order to collect data on the sexual preferences of every sort of person, they send seven sexy cyborgs into the city of New Tokyo with the intent of having relations with as many people as possible.

Review:

Image from: I.K.U. (2000)
Image from: I.K.U. (2000)
Image from: I.K.U. (2000)
Image from: I.K.U. (2000)
Image from: I.K.U. (2000)
Image from: I.K.U. (2000)
Image from: I.K.U. (2000)
Image from: I.K.U. (2000)
Image from: I.K.U. (2000)
Image from: I.K.U. (2000)
I know what the story is supposed to be because I've read about it. But although I knew the frame, I couldn't identify any part of the contents. I gather that this was intended as a serious attempt at art. For those of you who associate Japanese art with articulated paper cranes, polished lacquer bowls, finely made swords, and paintings of fractal ocean waves -- forget it. Nature got lost somewhere along the way.

If this film were a state of human consciousness, it would be thoroughly deranged due to the blossoming of some genetic time bomb or the imprudent use of a substance made entirely of indole rings. I couldn't follow it and neither could you.

But you have to admire its inventiveness. For decades now, film has struggled with some way of presenting sexual contact between human beings that is suggestive rather than explicit. You know, a cut to a fireplace or pounding surf. When that became a too-recognizable cliché, the movies gave us unidentifiable body parts in motion, the anonymous fingertips caressing the anonymous spine. A horizontal kiss more feverish than most. Here, every technique of indicating sexual contact that you ever saw is thrown together, along with a couple that must be brand new -- even during the same encounter. New techniques (new to me anyway) include the upside-down camera, the rotating camera, the fiber optic photograph of a condomized fist entering a body cavity (seen from the inside). And instead of the usual moans and gasps signifying an unspeakable pleasure, we have electronic beeps and boops on the sound track, accompanying what sounds like a doll's voice saying, "Center, prease", and " me." The movie's linguistic messages are half in English and half in Japanese. The visual message is in tongues.

I can't remember a second in which the images on the screen were still. Usually, both the figures and the camera move at the same time. And the camera makes extensive use of fish-eye lenses, so when the figures bow to the lens they seem to fall in our laps.

This is the most hyped-up soft-core porn imaginable, all lurid colors and zip lines and printed sentences clacking out across the screen and addressed to the viewer -- "You are special visitor. Come backstage." (Right.) Most special visitors will zoom from dazzlement to boredom in roughly twenty minutes, depending on age, confusion threshold, and exactly how deeply they've delved into the mushroom omelet.


Review by Robert J. Maxwell from the Internet Movie Database.