Awesomely Bad: The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai

Though nearly destroyed by allergies and a sinus infection, I return with what may be one of the weirdest movies I’ve ever seen. The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai is about as close to all-out porn as you can get without actually being pornographic. It’s what the Japanese call a “pink film”, which is basically a porn film that falls within Japan's very strict censorship laws that prohibit the showing genitalia. The typical result is a movie with a loose story (though not as bad as your typical porno) with simulated sex scenes in which the participant’s junk is hidden by conveniently placed props or careful framing of the scene. Sachiko Hanai started out as just a straight up pink film (then called Horny Home Tutor: Teacher’s Love Juice), but due to it’s incredible popularity, director Meike Mitsuru expanded it to the full-length feature I now present.

The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai starts by following a role-playing hooker, Sachiko Hanai, who is playing the role of a boy’s tutor who wants to sex him up. The result is a short simulated sex scene, of which the film is littered with, which comes complete with simulated money shot (that’s right, fake splooge). Once finished, Sachiko decides to celebrate another job well done by getting a tasty drink at a local coffee shop where she inadvertently stumbles upon a high-stakes deal between a North Korean and a Middle Easterner of some sort. Through clumsiness on Sachiko’s part she ends up fouling the deal and accidentally stealing the goods (a small metal canister that I initially thought was a vibrator) and her reward is a bullet right in her brain. Instead of killing her, the bullet ends up awakening a vastly superior intelligence and mental capabilities making it so that she can speak languages she's never heard and understand.

With her newfound mental powers, Sachiko goes on an intellectual sex binge, hooking up with a college professor, his son, and even the North Korean who is now searching for Sachiko and the loot she inadvertently stole. That loot turns out to be the cloned, severed finger of George W. Bush, which is bright red with an American flag painted on its fingernail. This isn’t just some boring finger though, it also seems to be possessed by some sort of G Dubya spirit, and logically the finger proceeds to rape Sachiko. Yes, the girl is raped by a possessed, cloned George Bush finger. While this is easily the weirdest thing in the movie, it’s not so far from the existing vibe of the movie to seem out of sorts. The finger makes a few more cameos, along with a few visions of George Bush (which is some Japanese guy with a paper G.W. mask on), including one point where Sachiko sticks the finger in the bullet wound in her forehead that never seems to heal (it’s usually covered by a band-aid with something odd written on it) to enlighten her so she can find a hidden Russian device that controls all of the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons.

It’s a little odd to see what is essentially a porno actually try to have a political message, even if it’s a little skewed and not entirely clear exactly what the message is. It’s obvious that fun is being had at the expense of George W. Bush and his administration, but there doesn’t seem to be anything specific about his policies that director Mitsuru Meike or writer Takao Nakano are targeting except maybe G. W.’s, and essentially all Americans, predisposition to war. If a porn star can run for governor, why can’t a bizarre Japanese sex film have a message?

Now it seems that there are a few very vague rules to have a film qualify as a pink film. I’m not sure who oversees these prerequisites and how they came to be, but there are 4 basics. There is a minimum number of sex scenes (how many, I couldn’t find out), the film must be approximately an hour (Sachiko Hanai is 90 minutes, but presumably the original was much closer to an hour), the film must be shot on 16 or 35mm in a week or less, and must be on a very small budget. These rules explain a lot about the look and feel of the movie. Despite being originally filmed in 2003 it has a much older feel as a result of the film it was shot on. The rules also explain why the effects, such as the severed finger and bullet wound, are so cheap looking. Despite the lo-fi approach that is inherent in the genre, the film still manages to do a good job of delivering its...uhh...story. The actors put those of a traditional porno to shame as they actually convey emotions and deliver lines without sounding like they’re trying to read the back of a cereal box.

Final Verdict: While the movie is incredibly entertaining and Emi Kuroda, who plays Sachiko Hanai, is pretty damn hot in the mostly pleasing sex scenes, I have to knock the film for one thing. I’m just not a big fan of rape. Not the George Bush finger rape, which is more ridiculous than anything else, but two flat out rape scenes. Both of the scenes do nothing for the story that couldn't be done otherwise, and one doesn't even have any bearing on the story at all. I just don’t like rape scenes. Especially in this case, where it’s just there as a fantasy fulfillment, in which rape seems to be romanticized by the sexually repressed Japanese in much the same way that war is by Americans. I’m not sure if there are going to be a lot of people watching this movie with friends, since it seems to verge on breaking the rule that guys shouldn’t watch porno together, but it’s definitely an entertaining movie. It gets a 3/5, but would’ve been a 4 if not for the rape scenes.