Electric Button (Moon & Cherry)

Aspiring to become a writer, university student Tadokoro (Tasuku Nagaoka) joins a creative writing club whose mostly-male members prefer to sit around and drink beer while talking about sex. The club's sole female member, Mayama (Noriko Eguchi), takes a shine to Tadokoro, and after discovering that he is still a virgin, realizes that she has both a new sexual conquest to look forward to and material for her planned erotic novel. Writer-director Yuki Tanada emerged as one of Japan's most prominent female filmmakers with this 2004 feature (originally titled Moon & Cherry). As with many Japanese comedies, much of the humor depends on a subtle understanding of the nation's cultural protocols (some American viewers may wonder about the extraordinarily naïve behavior by Tadokoro and the unsympathetic manner in which he is treated by Mayama). Nagaoka and Eguchi offer fine performances in this amusing comedy of sexual manners, a gender reversal tale of seduction and betrayal. Recommended. (P. Hall)