Direction: Kota Yoshida
Country: Japan
Kota Yoshida’s scrumptious comedy, Sexual Drive, is another curious triptych film coming from Japan, after last year’s Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. The film is an amusing sex-food hookup driven with skill, dynamism and humor. Although not always thrilling, it's excitingly cerebral and conveys an effective emotional undertow beneath its complex aphrodisiac food neurosis.
The first segment involves an apologizing man, Kurita (Tateto Serizawa), who visits his lover's husband to confess their passionate 3-year love affair. The second episode follows a woman suffering from panic disorder who accidentally hits Kurita while driving. In the last chapter, the latter character, who bridges the three stories, threats a married man on the phone, making him experience the same solitude his lover felt when he cancelled their rendezvous last minute.
The menu includes natto, mapo tofu, and ramen with extra back fat, but extends the piquant pleasures beyond the palatable. If you’re into unpretentious, funny films that offer multiple scenarios as a 70-minute escapist entertainment, then the cinematic ingredients of Sexual Drive should be enough for you to have a good time.
