None of Oshima's films looks or behaves much like any of the others, and In the Realm of the Senses establishes yet another new tonality in his work…. At first, it is as if Oshima were endorsing his characters' rhapsodic isolation by enshrining it in a form that permits no other frame of reference. A vein of fatalism in the plotting reinforces this impression, giving the film the air of a self-fulfilling prophecy: Kichi's willing surrender to death is anticipated in two earlier couplings in which he thinks his partner has died, and several prominent appearances of knives and razors prefigure the climactic act of castration.

In fact, of course, Oshima challenges this complacency as surely as he challenged the supposed naturalism of Boy. The obvious authenticity of the lovemaking is offset by the unreality of Sada's insatiable demands and Kichi's hypervirility. (p. 37)

Locating the action of In...