[Ostensibly, L'Empire des Sens (In the Realm of the Senses)] can be seen as a fuck film; indeed, it is so explicit that it may never be shown in "respectable" art houses or at festivals subject to discreet censorship. Its spectacle inheres in the unremitting display of sexuality, so that an occasional exterior shot seems a lapse in concentration…. The lovers' pact is the unqualified prolongation of desire; and whereas in a romantic film … we understand that desire may be kept alive as memory which nourishes one partner after the other's death, here a lapse into sleep or a soft penis signal a point of absolute termination Oshima's persistent narrowing denies any romantic or metaphysical gesture the opportunity of replacing the physical fact.

In part this critique of romantic desire and its replacement by the strictly sexual is marked by a restriction and isolation from any social network...