Archive for June 4th, 2008

Cloistered Nun: Runa’s Confession (1976)

Kimstim released a couple of months ago a mess of Nikkatsu Roman Porno and thanks to the glory of Netflix, I’ve been catching up with them. The other day, I caught Cloistered Nun: Runa’s Confession. The director Masaru Konuma is famous for directing some of Naomi Tani‘s more popular S&M flicks like Tattooed Flower Vase and Wife to Be Sacrificed. No, full-body tattoos or forced enemas here though. Instead, this flick features what one might expect from a “nunsploitation” movie — habit-ripping acts of sacrilegious sexual congress. The star — the giggly Runa Takamura, the half-Japanese, half-German go go dancer for the girl pop band Golden Half — has little of the dark charisma of Tani and is only semi-plausible as a nun.

In the film, Runa freaks out and joins a convent after her evil step-sister Kumi doinks her boyfriend. Once cloistered, she gets manhandled by a salivating gaijin priest. In one scene, he throws her into pile of mud and spilled milk and proceeds to soil her and her habit. Three years later, Runa shows up at Kumi’s doorstep. She has forgiven Kumi for her previous transgressions and on top of that, has a business proposition. Her mission is selling off some land cheap. Soon Kumi and Runa’s callow ex have ponied up the money to buy. Along the way, Kumi gets her comeuppance from the nine or so guys that she’s engaged to in the form of lavishly produced gang-rape. Of course, Runa’s out for revenge and bilks the money out of not only Kumi and her weaselly ex, but also the evil gaijin priest (who speaks laughably bad Japanese).

The film should have ended with Runa and her lesbian ex-nun girlfriend on a boat to Australia, laughing at all their ill-gotten money. Instead, it ends with Runa and girlfriend are on said boat getting raped at gun point. They are naked and all smiles as wacky, kooky music gets played over top. Seriously, what the fuck? There isn’t even a remote attempt at making it make narrative sense. As I noted with Tattooed Flower Vase, the real point of pink eiga is not eroticism but a bolstering of the seemingly very fragile male ego, buffeted by modernism and changing gender roles. Kumi is victimized for being a duplicitous bitch and Runa is victimized early on for looking cute in a habit. Sex is almost always used as a weapon of power and control and the male culprits are never punished for it. Except for the end of this film. Both the ex-boyfriend and the priest are duped out of a pile cash. And for that reason, Runa gets raped at gun point.  And because she’s a character based on fantasy instead of anything close to human psychology, she loves it.


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