The Gorgeous, Psychosexual True-Crime Tale That Survived Global Banning To Become a Classic

When Nagisa Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses came out in 1976, it immediately caused a ruckus. A Japanese movie that only managed to be produced under the country's restrictive laws concerning the depiction of genitals and sexual acts because it was a French co-production, with the film sent abroad to be processed and edited, In the Realm of the Senses is filled to the brim with scenes of progressively more extreme love-making. And, what's more, a lot of said scenes were, in fact, unsimulated. Immediately banned in the US, the UK, and West Germany, the movie had to fight to be released, and only managed to make its way to home video in the '90s. In Brazil, the movie was banned under the military dictatorship and subsequently released only four years later, in 1980. In its home country of Japan, In the Realm of the Senses remained unseen in its entirety at least up until the late 2000s, and was actually taken to court.