A Yakuza in Love A.K.A. Villainous Love

March 17, 2011
past event image
Film past event

1997, 110 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Rokuro Mochizuki. With Eiji Okuda, Yuna Natsuo, Shunsuke Matsuoka. Print courtesy of The Japan Foundation.

From March 14–June 30, 2011:
50% of all ticket sales will go to Japan Society’s Earthquake Relief Fund.

"Like no other yakuza film you’re likely to have ever seen."
–Chris MaGee, Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow

A dark, delicate, comic and complicated telling of a hard-as-nails, simple love story. Boy meets girl; boy falls in love, boy drugs girl. Boy and girl start a rather twisted, chemical-fueled affair. Things get sour. The boy is a low-ranking ne’er-do-well yakuza in an ill-fated gang, fighting a losing battle with their rival gang. The girl… well, the girl is just a waitress who should probably know better. Auteur Mochizuki (Onibi: The Fire Within; Another Lonely Hitman), director and co-writer, has fashioned this unlikely romance between two mismatched lost souls into a black comedy of startling directness and intensity, following the old boy’s fumbling (and often funny) attempts at romance through questionable methods of courtship (which include kidnapping into the bargain). Generously spiced graphic sex scenes alternate with moments of lyricism and otherworldly calm, subtly layering the characters and their path to ruin. As the strange relationship blossoms, the yakuza’s drug addiction and unstoppable habits of destruction threaten to destroy everything…

Part of the Globus Film Series:
Hardest Men in Town: Yakuza Chronicles of Sin, Sex & Violence


Special Preview

From 6:00-7:30 pm, ticketholders get an exclusive sneak preview of Japan Society’s spring exhibition Bye Bye Kitty!!! Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art, opening March 18. Among 40 installations of sculpture, painting, video and photography, from some of the most evocative artist living and working in Japan today, are such genre appropriate works as a dress with yards of blood streaming from it, a bevy of geisha grandmothers, happy-go-lucky school girls committing harakiri, a life-size glass bulb bedazzled taxidermy deer, and a spectacular 23-foot mural of mountains composed of thousands of dead salarymen.

TICKETS
$12/$9 Japan Society members, students & seniors

Buy Tickets Online or call the Japan Society Box Office at (212) 715-1258, Mon. – Fri. 11 am – 6 pm, Weekends 11 am – 5 pm.

Purchase more than 5 tickets for at least 5 different films and receive $2 off of each ticket! Special offer available only at Japan Society Box Office or by telephone at (212) 715-1258. Offer not available online.





  • Thursday, March 17, 2011
  • 7:30 pm