Banmei Takahashi’s 1994 film A New Love in Tokyo gets New York release

First shown in 1994, Banmei Takahashi’s A New Love in Tokyo is receiving a formal New York release after years outside the city’s theatrical circuit.

The film is presented primarily as erotica, but the reviewer notes it makes room for sweetness and intellectual pretensions alongside its kink. It is also a friendship movie: Rei (Sawa Suzuki), a dominatrix who works as an actress by day, becomes pals with Ayumi (Reiko Kataoka), a call girl planning to settle down with an aspiring doctor and who deposits money for their marriage while claiming it came from her father.

With a leisurely pace and more nudity than is typical for this newspaper’s reviews, the film follows the women’s routines by day and by night. The reviewer cites scenes in which Ayumi handles a distress call after encountering a knife‑wielding john and in which Rei slowly breaks in a client who imagines S&M will be philosophically enriching. The picture also subverts expectations by showing the dominatrix service as safer than the theater troupe, among whom venereal disease is on the loose.

At a screening attended by the reviewer, the English subtitles drifted mildly out of sync; the reviewer was told the problem will have been corrected. The review describes the film as a softcore picture for which understanding the dialogue is important. Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In Japanese, with subtitles. In theaters.

Key Topics

Culture, Banmei Takahashi, Sawa Suzuki, Reiko Kataoka, New York, Kani Releasing