Tadokoro learns about sex in a fast and furious way in ELECTRIC BUTTON
ELECTRIC BUTTON (MOON & CHERRY) (TSUKI TO CHERRY) (Yuki Tanada, 2004)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Wednesday, July 7, 6:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org/japancuts
Japanese writer-director Yuki Tanada made quite a cinematic debut in 2004 with ELECTRIC BUTTON (MOON & CHERRY), a romantic sex comedy that was part of the Love Collection Project. Shortly after shy virgin Tadokoro (Tasuka Nagaoka) joins the university erotic literature club, he finds himself being used over and over again as sexual fodder by the small club’s lone female, Mayama (Noriko Eguchi), who is doing a rather unique kind of research for her latest novel. Meanwhile, Tadokoro meets the sweetly innocent Akane (Misato Hirata) at the bookstore where they both work and wonders if he can have a real relationship with her. What follows is a funny, heated battle between Tadokoro’s heart, mind, and nether regions as he delves into his own writing and sense of self-worth. Recalling Pinku Eiga films, ELECTRIC BUTTON is playfully sexual and insightfully honest, a work that earned the female director well-deserved accolades. (She has gone on to make such films as 2006’s HAVE A NICE DAY and 2008’s AINT’ NO TOMORROWS.) Although the titillating ELECTRIC BUTTON was made back in 2004, the July 7 screening at the Japan Society, in the “Best of the Unreleased Naughties” section of the Japan Cuts festival, is its U.S. premiere. (Look for Akira Emoto as elder statesman Sakamoto, erstwhile leader of the club of oddballs; Emoto also appears in the festival’s MEMORIES OF MATSUKO and GOLDEN SLUMBER and was the irrepressible title character of Shohei Imamura’s DR. AKAGI.)