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Released by: Impulse Pictures
Released on: February 11th, 2020.
Director: Takashi Kodama
Cast: Shinobu Wakana, Miki Higuchi, Masayoshi Takigawa, Midori Yuzaki, Kazuo í”tani
Year: 1987
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True Story Of A Woman In Soapland: Tear! - Movie Reviews:
This one is presented by 'Filmkids' for some reason, and opens with a foxy hostess on her knees in between aisle welcoming us and offering to show us around. She shows us around a joint as the opening credits hit the screen, and brings us into a tiled room with a gold 'seat' of some sort in the center. Her clothes come off and, from the POV of the guy about to get done, we learn she's 22 and has worked here for two weeks. He sits on the gold stool and she takes a sponge and washes off his junk before going down on him and then getting on top of him.
We've got sixty-two-minutes left in this sixty-four-minute feature.
From there, a woman walks in a determined style, clad in a fur coat, across a gym track to a building where she spies some classical busts in the window. A male teacher named Kikuta (Kazuo í”tani) moves the bust and leaves the building, driving past the woman on the way. He arrives at his apartment and his mistress, a nurse named Mizue (Midori Yuzaki), is so happy to see him that she gets naked - and so does he. He's married and she's got a doctor boyfriend but this is the right time and the right place for sex, we're told. They go at it.
When they finish, she tells him she saw Hasekura (Shinobu Wakana) the other day, someone she hadn't seen since school years ago, and that she went into a 'soapland' (which seems to be a place where Japanese men go to get soaped up and sucked off by Japanese prostitutes)! It turns out he was having a bit of a fling with her way back when, and after he leaves his mistress, we realize that maybe he's still got feelings for her of some kind. After finishing up with his mistress, he goes home for the night only to learn that his wife knows he's been having an affair and has left him and taken their daughter with her.
He decides to go see Mizue but when she doesn't want anything to do with him, he opts instead to go visit Hasekura at the soapland. He takes her for dinner and they catch up and afterwards wind up back at her place where he chews some pills and has very energetic sex with her. The next day, Kikuta meets up with Mizue and tells her his wife knows, they're being watched and they need to find a new place to screw around. Then he goes off to visit Hasekura and, well, it's clear that they've now embarked on an affair of their own. Hasekura, however, still has to work as the soapland while Kikuta won't stop screwing around with other women, be those women his wife proper of a mistress or two. Mizue confronts Hasekura and things get complicated, particularly when Hasekura buys Kikuta a Mercedes Benz! He and Hasekura up the kink factor in their relationship but eventually his wife (Midori Yuzaki), who is pregnant now, lays it all on the line and tells him in no uncertain terms that if he doesn't want to be divorced and wants to be a part of her life and their kid's life, he needs to stop screwing other women and commit. Kikuta wants to do the right thing, but his relationship with Hasekura, at this point, has evolved into something more, something kinkier and something very dependent on lube!
More of a psycho-sexual soap opera than anything else, True Story Of A Woman In Soapland: Tear! (and admittedly excellent title if ever there was one) will hold you attention throughout with no trouble. The performances are more than adequate and the technical merits quite solid. The story itself is interesting, if never truly gripping, and the cast all handle the material well enough. There aren't a lot of twists and turns here… until the last two minutes which we won't spoilt, but let it suffice to say that, yeah, that one came out of left field. But it works! Takashi Kodama paces the picture well enough, it's never dull, and the cinematography is pretty solid as well.
I don't think this was based on a true story though.
True Story Of A Woman In Soapland: Tear! - DVD Review:
True Story Of A Woman In Soapland: Tear! is presented in 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen in a transfer clearly taken from an older analogue master. The image is soft and detail is lacking even by DVD standards but at least the image is stable, no problems with tape rolls or tracking lines of any kind. Colors look noticeably flat and black levels are inconsistent, looking more like a murky grey than true black. This doesn't looks great but it's watchable enough.
The Japanese language Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono track is fine. It's a bit flat and it has some audible crackle in the opening few minutes but thankfully that goes away fairly quickly. The white subtitles are clean, clear and easy to read and free of any noticeable typographical errors.
There are no extras, just a static menu.
True Story Of A Woman In Soapland: Tear! - The Final Word:
True Story Of A Woman In Soapland: Tear! is a decent enough slice of sleazy, sexy melodrama. The Impulse Pictures DVD release won't win any awards for quality but it is watchable enough and, for fans of the genre, this is one worth tracking down if a step or two way from 'classic' territory.
