Introduction

For the first piece of the Roman Porno Now series, Nikkatsu task Diago Matsui and screenwriter Date Sorami to bring Yamazaki Nao-Cola’s novel of the same name to life on the silver screen. While Matsui has proved himself to be a very capable and talented director (Ice Cream and the Sound of Raindrops (2017), Remain in Twilight (2021), Just Remembering (2022)), will his first erotic narrative be able to impress audiences as well. 

Review

Sawako Torai (Akari Fukunaga), whose first memory is the very warmth of her father’s hand, has developed, as she grew older, a kind of hobby of photographing older men all over town while fantasizing about them. At her work, she always maintains a cute facade towards her department leader and the men she has gone out with have always been older then her.

Yet, one night, Koichi Mori (Daichi Kaneko), a colleague who is of the same age, tries to ask her out. While he fails to get an straight answer from her, she fully grasp his intention. As he retreats to his desk, she suddenly asks him to have a drink together in the near future.

The opening minutes of Daigo’s narrative paints an image of Japanese men as beings that sexually approach young women to ease the suffering caused by the societal demand to wear a face that supports the harmony (wa) of the company as well as by the barrage of complaints they receive within their household. Matsui reveals that what pushes men to seek phantasmatic comfort in the arms of a nude female object-of-phallic-support is the continued confrontation with their fundamental castration. It is by getting some sexual gratification that they succeed in fleetingly escaping the lack that haunts them in their daily life, in momentarily feeling as if they posses the elusive phallus, the goal-of-desire.      

These sexual attacks lead Sawako to pose the following question: Why are older men so interested in young girls? While this is question worth posing – and Matsui provides an answer to it, it should not eclipse the riddle that is more fundamental to the narrative: why does Sawako keep approaching older men? What does she seek in older men? A hint to the answer is given from the get-go, in the enunciation that opens the narrative – my first memory is the warmth of my father’s hand.

The spectator will, quickly, notice that some of her other enunciations try to deny the phantasmatic origin of her attraction to older men. Through these vocalisations, Sawako underlines that she is not ready to accept the subjective truth that guide her acts and signifiers towards these fatherly figures (Narra-note 1). Yet, what is her subjective fantasy, her truth? What signifier determines her push to older men and underpins her relentless voyeuristic photographing? Is she merely thirsting for the fatherly aura – a ‘father’ to take as her sexual object – or is she searching for an elusive object that gives warmth, a loving hand?

Given her fixation on older men, the spectator might be surprised that she accepts Mori’s romantic approach. Even more puzzling is that she, as they become physical, eventually falls in love with him. It seemingly runs counter to the phantasmatic dynamic that directs her ‘romantic’ endeavours. Yet, we cannot but conclude that what she is looking for has remained absent in her flings with older men.

While some spectators might interpret the sudden shift as coinciding with the deterioration of her relation with her father (Akio Kaneda), it is unlikely that Sawako’s sudden reluctance to go out with Okouchi (Kanji Tsuda), her boss, is linked with this relational silence. The echo of the oedipal object of love she seeks does not short-circuit, but causes the desirability of those subjects marked by age (Narra-note 2, Narra-note 3). In other words, it is the deterioration of her relationship that causes the desirability of the fatherly shadows. Yet, can her relationship with Mori impact her long-standing fixation on older men? Can it enable her to try and repair her bond with her father and heal the lack of symbolic recognition she has been subjected to?

The composition of Hand is a rather static affair. While slow-paced dynamism is present, it is quite clear that Matsui relies on the power of the static shot to tell his rather evocative story. While Matsui does not offer anything special at the level of the camera, he does succeed in delivering a composition that is visually attractive. What ensures that Hand stays, at all times, visually pleasing is the combination of a great lightning-design, natural colour-schemes, and the softness that, due to Matsui’s heavy reliance on depth-of-field, marks almost every image. 

The framing of the sexual scenes stands out due to its serene approach. Yet, even though Matsui avoids a too exploitative framing, many sexual moments retain an eroticizing effect. This is, on the one hand, due to the great performances and, on the other hand, due to the emphasis on movement of bodies. Besides bringing the sexual encounters convincingly to life, Akari Fukunaga also succeeds in evoking, with her nuanced performance, the logic of her character.

With Hand, Daigo Matsui offers a nuanced exploration of the way we move with the romantic field is determined by our unconscious and the nachträglich valorisation of certain memories. By doing so, Matsui avoids delivering an exploitative erotic piece merely to be enjoyed by male audiences, but an experience that might cause some spectators to wonder how their romantic choices were determined.

Notes

Narra-note 1: Without fully realizing, she keeps divulging the truth of her logic to the Other and thus the spectator. While she tells that her cuteness towards older men in merely a social skill to Mori, her colleague, she advises her younger sister Rika (Natsuko Obuchi) to pretend to be the girl boys like.

Narra-note 2: It is, thus, more plausible that the poor relationship between her and her father is the very cause of her search for the fatherly shadow. In this sense, what she seeks is not so much a sexual object, but a replacement for her failed father.

What she searches for in the elderly Other is, in our view, nothing other than the father’s love, while what she needs from Mori is, first and foremost, sexual satisfaction. Yet, much to her surprise, the continued physical contacts causes love to blossom within her subject.