The Key to Sexual Revivification

A man attempts to cure his impotence by manipulating his wife and doctor into an affair to provoke his own jealousy in 1959's Odd Obsession (鍵, "Key"). This stylised satire from Ichikawa Kon pokes fun at both human sexual urges and the polite ways we avoid confronting them.

An old artist named Mr. Kenmochi is married to the beautiful and young Ikuko, the two of them played by Nakamura Ganjiro II and Kyo Machiko, who played a very different couple in Ozu's Floating Weeds around the same time. Kenmochi has been fighting his impotence with special injections, one of which we see administered rectally by a young man named Kimura (Nakadai Tatsuya), assistant to Dr. Souma (Hamamura Jun). Kimura is dating Toshiko (Kanou Junko), daughter of the Kenmochis. It's she who lets Mrs. Kenmochi in on Mr. Kenmochi's secret trips to the doctor for the injections.

Kimura visits that evening. Toshiko seems to find him dull and repulsive. Meanwhile, Mrs. Kenmochi gets drunk and passes out in the bath, a circumstance that leads to Kimura examining her naked while Mr. Kenmochi watches. At first, Kenmochi thinks this is an intentional technique on Kimura's part to arouse his jealousy but he soon realises he himself needs to concoct situations that lead to Kimura seeing his wife naked.

Nakadai's performance is really interesting. He starts the movie speaking directly to the camera about the inevitable infirmities of age and he does so with an amused, ironic tone.

He always seems slightly detached from the proceedings, like a devil.

It soon becomes clear that Ikuko is faking her fainting spells because she enjoys being seen by the men, Kimura in particular. This odd menage a troi eventually involves murder.

This is a colour movie and like a lot of good Japanese domestic dramas from the late '50s and early '60s it has a sort of green and brown palette. It's oddly peaceful and renders the sexually frustrated characters even more ridiculous somehow.

Odd Obsession is available on The Criterion Channel.

X Sonnet 1924

Conveyed beyond the grip of rails were trains.
But errant trains would want excessive slack.
With lumps of coal, they built some sooty brains.
A mighty beast was Locomotive Jack.
By swapping moons, the planets junked the list.
No type could range a clump of rocky spheres.
There's some would say the moon's a lumpy fist.
To punch the ocean down to salty tears.
A dozen islands skipped the Google map.
On one there hides a maiden rare and sweet.
She cooks with turtle shells and amber sap.
Her heart is like a warm and purple beet.
Another day concludes around her bed.
The sun descends and paints her pillow red.