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Yoshida Kota’s Sexual Drive Starring Shogen Heads to International Film Festival Rotterdam

, the new film by , will have its world premiere at the , where it will participate in the Big Screen Competition.

The story is split in three parts, a Japanese triptych about sex, aphrodisiac foods and secret desires. Kurita appears in every part, always with a box of Chinese chestnuts under his arm. In part one, Natto, named after a traditional fermented soy bean dish, Kurita visits designer Enatsu purporting to be in an affair with the latter's wife Masumi. In Mapo, named after Chinese tofu, Kurita asks Akane, the woman who used to bully him, to hit him with her car. The final part, Ramen, centres on the adulterous affair between married Ikeyama and Momoka. 

Although Sexual Drive contains no explicit sex scenes, it is definitely an erotic film. Director Yoshida Kota's sensual close-ups of the female leads relishing their favourite dishes with increasing arousal are reminiscent of the Japanese classic Tampopo (1985). Almost orgiastically, natto-eating Masumi asks Enatsu: “Do you want some?” A massive double entendre.

Check out the trailer for Sexual Drive here:

About the author

Rhythm Zaveri

Hello, my name is Rhythm Zaveri. For as long as I can remember, I've been watching movies, but my introduction to Asian cinema was old rental VHS copies of Bruce Lee films and some Shaw Bros. martial arts extravaganzas. But my interest in the cinema of the region really deepened when I was at university and got access to a massive range of VHS and DVDs of classic Japanese and Chinese titles in the library, and there has been no turning back since.

An avid collector of physical media, I would say Korean cinema really is my first choice, but I'll watch anything that is south-east Asian. I started contributing to Asian Movie Pulse in 2018 to share my love for Asian cinema in the form of my writings.

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