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Playful White Fingers
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (9th October 2025). |
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The Film
 Freshly arrived to Tokyo from the countryside, young Yuki (Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41's Hiroko Isayama) finds a factory job but otherwise leads a lonely existence until she meets charming Jiro (Cure's Hajime Tanimoto). At first, she resists his amorous overtures, attempting to mollify him by playing house in other respects like cleaning and cooking but finds that she is unbearably lonely when he is away. Yuki eventually gives in and Jiro is gentle until "the rite is over." Their relationship does not last long once Jiro disappears and Yuki is approached by the beautiful Yoko who reveals that Jiro is a two-bit thief who has plenty of women like Yuki believing they are the only one and that he has been caught and sentenced to prison for a year. Forced to quit her job when the detectives' attempts to get her to convince Jiro to reveal who he is working for casts suspicion on her from her co-workers, Yuki accepts an offer to stay with Yoko but is unnerved by the other woman's attentions. Yuki then meets Taku (Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs' Ichirô Araki) who claims to have been a cellmate of Jiro's and involves her as a lookout in a robbery with his reunited gang. Yuki more easily falls for him, and realizes that she too will have to learn how to steal in order to survive. Although she becomes proficient at pickpocketing in practice, she does not know if she has the nerve to actually do it to a real person and becomes further entangled in the higher stakes schemes of Taku and his gang. Yuki is befriended by Tachikawa (Street of Joy's Gô Awazu) and only too late discovers that he is a detective who has used her as a means of getting close to Taku who knows him well. Although Tachikawa warns her away from Taku and a life of crime, Yuki will have to decide herself on which side of the law she belongs. An early entry in Nikkatsu's Roman Porno line which gave plenty of studio-contracted assistant directors the opportunity to make their directorial debuts when many of the old guard left the studio due to the format change to softcore eroticism – the change also allowed the studio to scout out and make stars of less-inhibited onscreen talent as well – Playful White Fingers was the debut of Tôru Murakawa, a director subsequently better known for his action films including Toei's "Game Trilogy" starting with The Most Dangerous Game. Working from a script by colleague Tatsumi Kumashiro (The Woman with Red Hair) who stayed with the Roman Porno line throughout its duration with only a few diversions like Toei's version of Jigoku, Murakawa's film does not really feel like a Roman Porno film. Coming just a year after first film Apartment Wife: Love in the Afternoon which established a template onto which various stories could be grafted so long as they had a sex scene roughly every ten minutes of a seventy-odd minute running time, the film even diverges from those requirements, coming across as a hybrid of Japanese crime film and youth movie. Instead of mild juvenile delinquency leading to eventual conformism, Murakawa's film depicts crime as a step up from hand-to-mouth survival and its hippie-esque characters not as an easy target for simultaneous derision and exploitation for audience thrills but anti-establishment in more mundane rather than idealistic terms, taking a cynical view of the relationship between criminals and the law as "playing tag with cops" and Yuki's final decision can either be interpreted as her choosing to "take responsibility" by taking the blame for the actions of another or initiating herself into this arrangement. The few lengthy sex scenes are shot in a detached manner with only a few brief angles requiring self-imposed censorship with only the impromptu bathroom "orgy" expressing any sort of joy rather than heat so it should come as no surprise that director Murakawa's distaste for the Roman Porno genre was why he only directed three of them before leaving the studio and taking a hiatus before he would make his mark as an action movie director. 
Video
We have not information on the transfer but 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.45:1 widescreen Blu-ray of Playful White Fingers might be a newer transfer – possibly struck for Nikkatsu's own streaming platforms – as it looks spotless and vibrantly colorful with only occasional moments of softness in the location shooting with little in the way of aberrations in the older anamorphic lenses that is more evident in some of the film's Roman Porno contemporaries. During the sex scenes there are some instances of black frames which are presumably a stylistic touch since they come in the middle of shots and cover nothing like the more obvious black mattes (although there is a scene where a twosome becomes a non-consensual threesome, there are no BBFC notes about an cuts nor has 88 Films admitted to making any trims before submitting). 
Audio
The Japanese LPCM 2.0 mono track is clean without any distracting hiss, clear post-dubbed dialogue, sparse atmospheric effects, funky musical accompaniment, and some interesting sound design choices including a potentially obscene monologue first heard in voice-over by Jiro and then as a recitation and chant accompanying a later sex scene. Optional English subtitles are included and attempt to visually depict the sequence in which Yuki and Taku make a guessing game of reading brand names backwards. 
Extras
The film is accompanied by an audio commentary by film historians Amber T and Jasper Sharp who discuss Murakawa's feelings about the Roman Porno genre and compare the film to a Toei effort along with discussing the roots of the "Game Trilogy" here and the influences of America's New Hollywood movement while also revealing that Murakawa himself admitted to being inspired by Robert Bresson's Pickpocket. They also compare the attitudes of screenwriter Kumashiro whose other films viewed sex as liberation while Murakawa seemed to just want to get those scenes out the way (along with the claim by actor Araki that he directed the sex scenes).  "Desire Within" (40:38) is a lengthy interview with director Murakawa who recalls being the youngest of his family and wanting to study film to distinguish himself from his older brother who would take over his father's business and second oldest brother who studied music, eventually having to cut ties with his father when he wanted to study filmmaking. He recalls deciding he wanted to make films at Nikkatsu after seeing Crazed Fruit which would become a widely-released international hit. Getting into Nikkatsu was easy but he found himself starting at the bottom working in the cinemas from cleaning to becoming a walking advertisement. He discusses at length his ascension from fourth to first assistant director and all of the responsibilities of each including an attention to detail that had him highly recommended even to other studios – Murakawa would assist Toshio Masuda (Outlaw Gangster VIP) on the Japanese side of Tora! Tora! Tora! after the firing of Akira Kurosawa – and resisting the opportunity to direct a Roman Porno until he was the last assistant director standing. He discusses the production of Playful White Fingers, pitching the idea to producer Man Kurosawa, being recommended Isayama by Awazu, and convincing Araki to appear in the film. He also reveals that he agreed to direct two more Roman Porno films in exchange for a reference as well as discussing some of his activities between leaving Nikkatsu and resurrecting his career half a decade later. "Touchy Feely" (12:13) is an introduction by film historian Kei Chiba who also discusses Kumashiro's original screenplay and the elements that Murakawa though too sordid for his taste and the love story element he added, likens the pragmatism of the Taku character to Murakawa's own practicality, the script's attitude to sex, and the film's anti-establishment themes mirrored in Murakawa's own post-war childhood (particularly the chewing gum that Taku never stops chewing until the final shot). The disc also includes a still gallery (1:26) and the film's theatrical trailer (1:57). 
Packaging
The first pressing includes an OBI strip and the booklet featuring "Scrap Cars and the Death of Affect" by Dimitri Ianni (not supplied for review).
Overall
Playful White Fingers does not feel like a Nikkatsu Roman Porno film because director Tôru Murakawa never wanted to make one, the resulting film looking back to the New Wave influence on Nikkatsu's earlier films and forward to Murakawa's own action films.
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