The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai

The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai is essentially Japanese soft-core porn feigning art-house pretensions. When sex worker/home tutor Sachiko (Emi Kuroda) is caught in a terrorist crossfire and shot in the head, she becomes a genius hooker, one compelled to service librarians who are able to get Sachiko's motor running merely by talking about Noam Chomsky. In what passes for a plot, the weirdly autonomous trigger finger of George W. Bush—which has been scurrying around on its own and is wanted by North Korean spies—ends up violating Sachiko in what could be construed as some sort of political statement on how the American president is screwing the world...but then it would appear that the world is loving it. Bottom line: this is a revolting, headache-producing, misogynistic movie, with subpar image quality and subtitles that are barely legible (and yes, I know that quibbles about production values here sound like the equivalent of saying “Waiter, waiter, the food is terrible! And the portions are too small!”—but there you have it). By the way, did I mention the fact that this film is an expanded version of the original Japanese “pink film” Horny Home Tutor: Teacher's Love Juice? Not recommended. [Note: DVD extras include a featurette on “pink films” (Japanese soft-core porn), and two original films that inspired the feature-length movie. Bottom line: a decent extras package for in indecent and idiotic flick.] (M. Johanson)