A Woman in the Painting (1999)

A passionate telling of the story of Sada Abe, a woman whose affair with her master led to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship.

Kyôko, a traumatized young Japanese girl, finds herself struggling with her self-confidence in her adult life. Growing up in a family without her mother and her sister, she constantly questions the rationale of sex and the notion of liberty in modern Japanese society.

When Muraki, a porn magazine editor, watches a blue film depicting a gang rape in a school, he becomes obsessed with the lead actress. Quite by chance, whilst looking to reserve a location for a shoot, he happens to encounter her at a love hotel where she works as a receptionist. Her name is Nami and she reluctantly agrees to speak with him, and confesses that it was her in the film. Then, Muraki tells Nami that he wants her to model for him.

18 years after the mysterious death of her mother, Maya takes religious vows to find out what terrible things happened to her mother inside the Sacred Heart Convent. As soon as the door closes to the nunnery, the nuns start torturing her. She also has to deal with a lecherous archbishops and a lesbian mother superior.

Aldin, a vagabond water vendor, embarks of a series of fantastical and tragic misadventures through the Middle East in search of love, fortune, and power.

After being used and betrayed by the detective she had fallen in love with, young Matsu is sent to a female prison full of sadistic guards and disobedient prisoners.

The story of a teenage boy called Yu, who falls for Yoko, a girl he runs into while working as an upskirt photographer in an offshoot of the porn industry. His attempts to woo her are complicated by a spot of cross-dressing – which convinces Yoko that she is lesbian – dalliances with kung-fu and crime, and a constant struggle with Catholic guilt.

The neglected common-law wife of a Japanese librarian is repeatedly harassed by a young man with a heart condition who seduces her with the prospect of a better life.

Anna Tsuchiya blasts back in time playing an oiran, a top-notched geisha of the Edo period’s Yoshiwara District, navigating brothel politics while trying to cling to the man she loves.

The story follows the social intercourse between a cameraman, Masaya, with a visual impairment, and Misako who disconnects from the world.