Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano dir.Hisayasu Sato

名前のない女たち　Namae no nai Onnatachi　Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano

CAST   Norie YASUI,  Mayu SAKUMA,  Minoru TORIHADA,  Ryunosuke KAWAI,  Aya KIGUCHI,  Natsumi KAMATA,  Ini KUSANO,  Hirofumi ARAI,  Makiko WATANABE

STAFF  Director: Hisayasu SATO,  Author: Atsuhiko NAKAMURA,  Producer:  ****** KOGUCHI,  Ryoji KOBAYASHI,  Koichi KUSAKABE   Associate Producer:  Keiko KUSAKABE, Sen KATAYAMA,  Line Producer: Ataru UEDA

Screenplay: Naoko NISHIDA,    Cinematographer: Kazuhiro SUZUKI,  Set Decorator: Kaori HAGA,  Editor: Hiromitsu YAMANAKA,  Music: Jun KAWABATA,  Theme Song: “Virgin Blues” performed by Jun TOGAWA,  Production House: Shibuya Production

INVESTORS  Osamu FUJIOKA,  Ryoji KOBAYASHI,  Koichi KUSAKABE,  Keiko KUSAKABE,  Manabu HARADA

PRODUCED & COPYRIGHT OWNERS  ©”Namae no nai Onnatachi” production committee ( HAPPINET, SHIBUYA PRODUCTION, THERE’S ENTERPRISE INC. / MAKOTOYA CO.,LTD> / KADOKAWA CONTENTS GATE)

PROLOGUE – Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano

Japan has an AV (adult video) market estimated to be around 100 billion yen. With 20,000 new titles per year, or a little less than 2,000 per month, 50 to 100 new films are made each day. There are around 10,000 actresses per year who appear in these films (including those who quit after one film). If we include those on Internet movies, the amateurs who don’t belong to an agency, victims of hidden cameras, and other “underground” performers, it is said that there are 30,000 to 40,000 of them.

***The sales of adult videos in 2005, known to have been the peak (excluding Internet videos): 13,558 new titles / 37.23 million copies sold / 76.6 billion yen in revenue / average price of one title 2,746 yen / average number of copies per title 2,057.

“Extreme genius” Hisayasu Sato takes the megaphone for the first time in four years and makes a sensational yet naïve movie based on the non-fiction bestseller of the same title, a four-volume compilation of interviews on life and sex with “kikaku,” or un-credited, hired-for-the-day porn actresses (published by Takarajimasha; volumes 1 to 4; 250,000 copies sold).

***Porn actresses are divided into the “tantai (starring)” actresses, who appear by themselves on film, and the “kikaku (supporting)” actresses, whose faces and/or names don’t appear on film. The ratio of the former to the latter is said to be 5% to 95%.

INTRODUCTION – Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano

One day on the streets of Shibuya, Junko, a dull office clerk, gets recruited as a porn actress. She discovers her new self—the popular cos-play porn actress named Lulu—and feels she has finally found a place for herself. She opens her heart to Ayano, an actress from the same agency and former motorcycle gang member who she meets on a set. Then one day, a porn actress commits suicide. The harsh reality of the actresses that are dispensed once they lose popularity also hits Lulu. Lulu feels that she finally find a place she belongs to. But is it really the place she could be herself?

There are the “tantai” porn actresses, who are the stars that appear on TV and magazines, and there are the “kikaku” supporting actresses, who get hired by the day to sell sex and perform extreme acts before they are thrown away. Each actress has her own reasons for choosing this job, but at times their pride swells. At times they feel degraded. They have men who they want to share their lives with and friends who support them. They all laugh and cry and somehow manage to stay alive!

To seek comfort and convenience, people in the modern world have to be clever and streetwise. This is a candid story of ordinary, awkward girls whose only means of survival is to sell their souls and bodies.

The film is directed by Hisayasu Sato, who enjoys high acclaim both domestic and abroad. Starring as porn actresses Lulu and Ayano are newcomers Norie Yasui and Mayu Sakuma. In addition to these dauntless, fresh actresses, the individualistic and strong cast that includes Hirofumi Arai, Makiko Watanabe, Minoru Torihada, Aya Kiguchi, and Ryunosuke Kawai bare the pure love of human existence and the joys and pains of youth through extreme yet beautiful and erotic scenes!

STORY – Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano

Wouldn’t it be fun if you could become someone else?!

Her hobbies are reading and taking a walk in the park. Junko, a 22-year-old office clerk who lives a dull life under her mother’s thumb, gets recruited by a scout on the streets of Shibuya. “Are you enjoying life? Wouldn’t it be fun if you could become someone else?”

On the set of an adult film—. The male actors and the sex were scary and shocking, but it was refreshing and new. When Junko, with her stage name of Lulu, puts on a blond wig and wears an otaku costume, she feels like she’s become someone else. Working on the same set is Ayano, a former motorcycle gang member who struggles to control her bouts of rage while allowing her boyfriend to leech off her. For Ayano, Lulu is annoying and naïve but she can’t stop herself from worrying about her.

When Lulu’s popularity increases, a fan starts stalking her, Junko’s co-workers at the company find out about her job as Lulu, and her agent plans to cast her in a gangbang film. A troubled Lulu finds herself walking to Ayano’s apartment…

Then one day, a porn actress commits suicide. The harsh reality of the actresses that are dispensed once they lose popularity also hits Lulu. Lulu feels that she finally find a place she belongs to. But is it really the place she could be herself?

Director Hisayasu Sato – Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano

He worked prolifically in the early 90s in the genre of pink films and is now in his ripe years of filmmaking. Along with fellow directors Kazuhiro Sano, Takahisa Zeze, and Toshiki Sato, he is known as one of the “four heavenly kings of pink” (pinku shintenno). His films that were shown in various film festivals around the world received high acclaim, making the audience believe “this director is crazy.” Sato also has greatly influenced the “seven lucky gods of pink” (pinku shichifukujin), namely Toshiya Ueno, Shinji Imaoka, Yoshitaka Kamada, Toshiro Enomoto, Yuji Tajiri, Mitsuru Meike, and Rei Sakamoto, as well as other directors and authors of splatter, cult, and adult films.

Born 1959 in Shizuoka Prefecture. Graduated from Tokyo Polytechnic University. He is originally from Kan Mukai’s Shishi Production and worked as the assistant director in pink films by Yojiro Takita and others. After making a sensational directional debut in 1985 with Kurutta Shokkaku (Mad Love! Lolita Poaching), he won the Best New Director Award in the Zoom Up Film Festival of the same year. Later, he comes to direct Megyaku NAKED BLOOD (‘96) and other graphically hardcore films dealing with madness and perverse eroticism that lurk in society. He is known domestic and abroad as a visual artist with an individualistic worldview of a genius that transcends the border of pink films, and he enjoys a cult-like popularity overseas. Since 1996, he has also directed movies for the general theaters, such as Yabu no Naka, Irezumi, nd Imomushi—Ranpo Jigoku.

Listed below are the films by Director Sato available overseas, including video releases in the US and England.

KITAMI (AKA. MUSCLE) ’88 Kurutta Butokai

THE BED ROOM(AKA. AN ARIA ON GAZE) ’92  Uwakizuma Chijokuzeme

LOVE-ZERO=INFINITY ’92 Iyarashii Hitozuma Nureru

RAFURESHIA ’95 Sukebezuma Otto no Rusu ni

SPLATTER:NAKED BLOOD ’96 Jogyaku Naked Blood

AV (Porn) Actress Job Placement Office – Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano

by Atsuhiko Nakamura

“Kikaku,” or supporting, porn actresses are not credited on the films, and they transform themselves into schoolgirls or office workers or housewives or nurses or female perverts or groper victims depending on the day’s project and sell sex on wages per diem. Contrary to popular belief, “porn actress” does not equal “good money.” The ones that do get paid a lot, somewhere between 400,000 yen to 2,000,000 yen per title, are the girls who are treated like idols whose names appear on the credits. They are called “tantai (starring)” actresses (only a handful of actresses—less than 5%—fit into this category). The average porn actresses, that is to say, the “kikaku” actresses, are paid by the hour and the acts they perform, for example, “1 take + 1 fellatio,” “2 takes + 1 pseudo,” and “1 anal + 1 take.” Nameless, average-looking actresses can only earn between 30,000 yen and 150,000 yen. Selling sex for 30,000 yen hardly seems to be worth the risks, but it does not deter women from wanting to appear in porn films.

Porn actresses always belong to an agency. Big, middle-sized, small, ultra-small, there are several hundreds of them mainly in Tokyo, and they are the modern woman slave traders that cast women in porn films, porn films for sales, publishers, Internet, CS broadcasting, underground videos, and wherever naked women are required. Each agency has countless scouts who keep themselves busy everyday recruiting women. These scouts roam around the stations of busy entertainment districts regardless the time of day, and they accost every woman with above-average face and body. Agencies that handle nudity are a group of outlaws in the gray area of the law and usually snatch up about 40 to 70 percent of the remuneration paid by the manufacturers and publishers.

These days, there is a skyrocketing number of girls who send in applications to the agencies via the Internet and magazines that introduce high-income jobs, but their fate usually depends on whether or not they stop to talk to the scouts who approach them on the streets in the busy entertainment districts. The agencies and scouts are experts at sweet-talking women into taking their clothes off on film. How many people are actually satisfied with their lives? I have no money. I’m out of a job. I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m lonely. I’m bored. Life isn’t exciting. I have no friends. I’m in a fight with my boyfriend. I’m anxious about my future. They jab at the small voids in their hearts, remove one worry or trouble at a time, and present the path to becoming a porn actress by suggesting “making money = being needed by society.” Women who appear in porn films are not only outlaws and prostitutes. They are also students of prestigious universities, housewives and mothers, and employees of top-notch companies, and that is because their job as porn actresses fills the voids in their hearts.

The moment a porn actress makes up her mind bare her body, she becomes the star. The “kikaku” actresses may only have supporting roles but are a necessary part of the films nonetheless. They belong somewhere, and the job is exciting, and they’re needed, and they get paid for it. Most people get used to being naked after a few times. Everything they need to survive is offered, and there are people who propose that path in every entertainment district, and after that, it’s just question of whether they do it or not. Anybody could become a porn actress tomorrow, and there would be no surprise. Rather than being anxious and unsatisfied in the norms of society where they have to keep worrying about other people’s opinions, these girls who chose the path of a porn actress chose to live a life with the risks in return for a fuller one in which they are the stars.

SPEC – Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano

2010/JAPAN/COLOR/STEREO/16:9/SHOT by 7D Canon/HDCAM/105min./

©”Namae no nai Onnatachi” production committee

( HAPPINET, SHIBUYA PRODUCTION, MAKOTOYA CO.,LTD. KADOKAWA CONTENTS GATE)

RELEASE INFORMATION – Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano

theatrical release in Japan from 4th September 2010 distributed by There’s Enterprise Inc. and Makotoya Co.,Ltd.

world premiere:  The 1st Zipangu Fest in London, UK 2010.11.23-28

The 12th Japanese Film Fest Hamburg, GERMANY 2011.5.25-29

The 33th Moscow International Film Festival, RUSSIA  2011.6.23-7.2

The 10th NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL & JAPAN CUTS, USA  2011.7.1-22

The 15th FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, CANADA 2011.7.14-8.7

WORLD SALES – Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano

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