In medieval France, young couple Jean and Jeanne marry, but on the wedding night, an attempt to pay the required tribute to their lord results in a group sexual assault on Jeanne. Shattered by this, Jeanne is visited by Satan in the form of a very small penis man, who offers her the power to strike back against her abusers in exchange for her soul. Jeanne initially resists, but succumbs in stages, each resulting in penis Satan becoming a bit larger and Jeanne gaining some power over the lord, but ultimately facing greater setbacks. When she is at her lowest, she gives in completely and soon must be dealt with by the lord.
The first thing to note about this film is that it is exquisitely animated. Anime pioneer Eiichi Yamamoto, who had a hand in "Astroboy" and "Kimba the White Lion", forgoes any semblance of contemporary anime style and forges a psychedelic and deeply transgressive style based in modernist European watercolors. A lot of the animation is just still watercolor paintings that the camera pans across, but there's also a fair amount of animation. It's an absolutely gorgeous film.
This provides even more power to the film's very sexual, hallucinatory and transgressive images. It's very easy to label a film this explicit as "pornography", but none of the imagery in this film is used with any intention to arouse the viewer. It's very much apiece with the story that quite deliberately does not equate the embrace of "Satan" ... in this story, the embrace of personal, anti-authoritarian power partly via sexuality ... with evil. It's a deeply disturbing film with some of the most bizarre sexual imagery I have ever seen, but I also think it's a quiet masterpiece.
The first thing to note about this film is that it is exquisitely animated. Anime pioneer Eiichi Yamamoto, who had a hand in "Astroboy" and "Kimba the White Lion", forgoes any semblance of contemporary anime style and forges a psychedelic and deeply transgressive style based in modernist European watercolors. A lot of the animation is just still watercolor paintings that the camera pans across, but there's also a fair amount of animation. It's an absolutely gorgeous film.
This provides even more power to the film's very sexual, hallucinatory and transgressive images. It's very easy to label a film this explicit as "pornography", but none of the imagery in this film is used with any intention to arouse the viewer. It's very much apiece with the story that quite deliberately does not equate the embrace of "Satan" ... in this story, the embrace of personal, anti-authoritarian power partly via sexuality ... with evil. It's a deeply disturbing film with some of the most bizarre sexual imagery I have ever seen, but I also think it's a quiet masterpiece.