SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

ebiros2 Director and creator of this movie, Susumu Hani was one of the directors who were known for his avant garde movie making style. There were others in his league such as Nagisa Ooshima, and Kiju Yoshida that formed Japanese New Wave cinema movement. Hani himself had an avant garde lifestyle getting divorced from his wife finding out that he was having an affair with her sister, and Hani later marrying the sister of his ex-wife.Hatsukoi Jigokuhen was an experimental movie made in the late '60s when Japan was experiencing new culture movement influenced by the Hippie culture. Most of Japan's avant garde films are from this period.This movie was made for the youth of the time. It depicts the difficulties that the youth were experiencing at the time such as college entrance exam, country girl coming to Tokyo and having to work as a nude model to supplement her income, and a boy who's relationship with her is his first love. Both Kuniko Iwai who played Nanami and Akio Takahashi who played Shun were new comers into the movie business. I believe the little girl who played Mami is Hani's own four year old daughter Mio Hani.While other directors who were part of the avant garde movement were seriously seeking new forms of liberal expression with various success, I believe that Hani has bona fide insanity about his approach. The movie shows the underground culture that existed in Japan at the time, but there are segments that are not related to the story that borders on child porn, SM element in what goes on inside the underground clubs. All of the avant garde movies that came out of Japan are very quiet. Conversations are all quiet and slow, and so is the progress of the story. And all talk about free spirited people, that in many ways live irresponsible lives. In the end the style seemed to have failed to set new direction, and people lost interest in this style of movie. Looking at them 40 years later is interesting in seeing the society of Japan during that time.

chaos-rampant This is an actual question in the film, something to seriously meditate on. The riddle suggests the answer (that we get nothing), but the answer given challenges our preconceived notion.Can we say we get nothing from the peeling of the onion? We still have an onion (peeled away) and the peeling has happened, there is change, movement, progression. This is how I feel the film functions as New Wave. If we peel it to arrive at a core we may be frustrated, but if we come for the peeling instead? For the process of transformation itself? So, if you peel life what do you get? In a marvelous hypnosis scene, a young man is called by the doctor to visualize a screen and see what goes there. Do we project ourselves upon the images on screen or does the screen upon us?The first love here is awkward, erratic, youthful, perhaps not love at all. The inferno is society and the self, or the self trying to cope with society. I like how the portrait of youth is angsty but loving, how the folly of youth is embraced. In Yoshishige Yoshida's Eros + Massacre from the following year, the two young students living in a modern Japan are aimless, disaffected, they act as though they know. Here the young couple fumbles in the dark, only now getting to know that the world is a dark place.And if we peel cinema, what do we get then? If we begin to disassimilate the narrative in the effort to see what exists inside and examine the parts, do they make a whole or do we make it by our presence as viewers; this is why Inferno is valuable to me, because I'm always on the lookout for films the peel away the language of cinema, tweak and contort image to see will it break down at some point to reveal truth.Oh, we may get nothing at all eventually, or have a helluva hard time convincing others that nothingness itself is the most valuable, but we are still not at the point where we started. Meaning a journey has taken place that dislocated us, our sense, our sense of image. In this sense this is a true New Wave film. As with Godard the breach with traditional narrative is desirable here, unlike Godard though Nanami is not reactionary, it's angsty or unorthodox because it has a reason. Nanami's society hasn't solved its problems yet like the French New Wave's has, or perhaps in having solved some of them, a yawning chasm that goes back in time is revealed.

manuel corbelli I'm sorry, this is no "Noberu Baku" arty film most people expect it to be: amateurish (ok, it was probably made on a very low-budget string), the montage is mostly horrible, characters are more or less psychologically flat. Frankly speaking, i would call this a pretentious, and kind of disturbing, b-movie. On the ethic i heard this is supposed to be sensitive while dealing with delicate issues like child molestation and sexual abuse in general, yet actually it isn't but a quite obvious exploitative flick showing some classical Japanese s/m, that is naked bodies of women wrestling and whipping each other, and an immature yet bothersome depiction and look upon child abuse. Just little brain and little heart in this movie. To be watched only if you are interested in obscure Japanese new wave movies (i do love this period of Japanese cinema) or if you are kinky enough to be seduced by the violent Japanese imagery of humiliation and abuse. P.S.: can't they just screw like "normal" people? ;o)

haildevilman Well who says the Japanese can't do French? A long slow-paced drama about a man with a past. A past that screws up his potential romances. Apparently his father was a bad man and now he can only talk to loose chicks.The core is about first love in general. Most of us have dealt with it. This is how this one guy tries to.The filming is sehr arty and you know the dialogue was deliberate. The pace reminds one of a student film at times and the camera-work was good for the seemingly non-existent budget.I saw this on video years ago and saw it again in Tokyo during an art house revival. I wish it were better known.This is one you can take your lady to as well.