Antiporno
アンチポルノ
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A novelist humiliates her assistant in a yellow room until the set collapses — Sono's essay on being a woman inside pornography.
Kyoko is a young novelist and artist who has become the celebrity of the moment. She lives in a room of screaming primary colours, calls herself a madwoman, and talks to the ghost of her younger sister, Taeko. Her manager, Noriko, runs her schedule minute by minute and obeys every order. Preparing for a magazine interview, Kyoko humiliates Noriko again and again, and when the all-female magazine crew arrives, she strips Noriko and orders the other women to rape her.
Then a director shouts "Cut", and a crew of men walks in. It is a film shoot. Off camera, Noriko is a veteran actress who despises Kyoko, the inexperienced newcomer, and now she is the one who humiliates Kyoko. The director sexually assaults Kyoko backstage, to prove, he says, that she is no virgin and can fake pleasure, while the actresses listen and laugh. With each new take it grows harder to tell the role from the woman.
Fragments of a past surface: a family dinner table where sex was discussed as casually as the weather, a mother who died, a father and stepmother, and Taeko, who said she wanted to die and persuaded a classmate to kill her. Kyoko goes home, announces that she has been cast in a porn film, accuses her father and stepmother of hypocrisy and begs her father to take her virginity; he fights her off. She asks the first man she meets in the street. In a forest he turns violent and rapes her, until she starts telling him what to do and the encounter changes. At her audition the crew calls her a whore and demands her most painful memory. It is Taeko's death.
The scene is reshot with Kyoko and Noriko in each other's roles, and Kyoko breaks down, crawling across the floor calling for Taeko. At the end she is alone in a room when Taeko, alive, brings her a birthday cake. Kyoko drives her face into it again and again, raging that women in Japan will never be free, as coloured paint pours from the ceiling. She sees her father and stepmother having sex, and crawls away, screaming for a way out.
Starring
Ami Tomiteas Kyoko
A celebrated young novelist and artist, or the actress playing one, whose sense of who she is dissolves across repeated takes.
Kyoko’s story
Kyoko, a celebrated novelist, talks to the ghost of her sister, Taeko, torments her manager, Noriko, and orders the women of a magazine crew to rape her. A director calls cut: this is a film shoot, and Kyoko is a newcomer whom Noriko, a veteran, despises. The director sexually assaults her backstage while the actresses laugh, and with each take role and woman blur. At home she calls her father and stepmother hypocrites and begs her father to take her virginity; he fights her off. A man she stops in the street rapes her in a wood, until she starts telling him what to do. Pressed at her audition for her most painful memory, she names Taeko's death. At the end she rages that women in Japan will never be free, and crawls off screaming for a way out.
Mariko Tsutsuias Noriko
Kyoko's obedient manager, or the veteran actress playing her, who becomes Kyoko's tormentor the moment the camera stops.
Noriko’s story
Noriko is Kyoko's manager, who runs her schedule to the minute and obeys every order, even as Kyoko humiliates her again and again, then strips her and orders the women of a magazine crew to rape her. When the director calls cut, Noriko is revealed as a veteran actress who despises the inexperienced newcomer playing Kyoko. Off camera she is the one who humiliates Kyoko, in rituals that mirror the scripted scene. When Kyoko breaks down during another take, Noriko angrily demands that she be fired and recast. In the end the scene is shot again with the two women in each other's roles, Noriko now playing the celebrity, until Kyoko falls apart and crawls across the floor calling for her dead sister.
Ami Fukudaas Taeko
Kyoko's younger sister, a girl who played the piano, whose death haunts Kyoko and who keeps returning as an apparition.
Takumi Bandoas Ayao Haraguchi
The director of the film within the film, who picks apart Kyoko's performance as the celebrity of the age.
Why it matters
Antiporno was Sion Sono's contribution to Nikkatsu's reboot of its Roman Porno label, made under the series' rules of a running time around seventy minutes and a sex scene roughly every ten. Sono said he had turned the offer down, and agreed only when he could make an antiporno instead. The film is a hall of mirrors: a woman humiliating another woman, a director humiliating both, a family that talks freely about sex and recoils when a daughter acts on it. The issues are the sexual exploitation of women in the film industry and at home, and the double bind its tagline spells out from its own dialogue: a virgin and a whore, free and a slave. Critics divided. Some saw a bold exposure of the very industry that commissioned it; Slant called Sono allergic to subtlety. Its last image, a woman screaming for an exit, may be its plainest argument.