Nude Celebs: Misaki Mori - Fans of the Japanese film genre of Pink eiga, (or "Pink Film"), herald Flower and Snake as a cinematic masterpiece and its director, Takashi Ishii, as an incomparable erotic craftsman. Pink eiga has no real equal in popular Western Cinema, but appears to be a companion to softcore, just laced with more intense, often bondage-laced action. For an unsuspecting viewer unfamiliar with the genre, Flower and Snake is less likely to titillate than frighten as the sexual proceedings can get fairly explicit and intense.

The story follows the "eroduction" (the original name of the Pink eiga genre) of young wife Shizuko Tôyama. A lauded tango dancer and spouse to an affluent art critic, Shizuko begins the story haunted by perverse dreams of a sexual nature and a fear of intimacy in life. When her husband cannot repay titanic debts to the Yakuza, the leader of the mafia has Shizuko kidnapped – to her husband’s knowledge – and has her strung up in a circus ring in front of a masked audience. In order to repay his debts to the Yakuza boss, an old and frail sadist with theatrical flair, Shizuko's husband has sold her to the Yakuza to do with her as they wish. The result is an hour-long series of sometimes erotic, often disturbing sexual trials that slowly reveal the inner freak inside Shizuko.

As Shizuko, the positively ravishing Aya Sugimoto is a vision of white skin and dark hair with striking, sensual features – a woman so perfectly sculpted by genes that it’s rather shocking to see her in such an intense, explicit movie. And Sugimoto gives here one of the most fearless, strong and shocking portrayals any viewer is likely to come across in any branch of world cinema. Bound, dominated and ultimately the claimant of her own shadowy desires for the darker side of sex, Sugimoto's Shizuko is a Japanese cousin to Corinne Cleary’s title character from The Story of O; the differences between them being their respective culture’s BDSM activities.

Also like The Story of O, Flower and Snake is beautifully, lovingly shot and assembled with a deft directorial hand. While the proceedings are unsettling at times, the fine line between pleasure and pain is walked expertly by director Ishii and on a repeat viewing much of the initial surprise yields to an appreciation for how carefully the material is handled.

The one striking misfire in the picture is the fate of Shizuko's bodyguard, a bubbly-yet-strong woman named Kyôko Nojima played by frequently nude Japanese model and actress Misaki Mori. Also abducted by the Yakuza and subjected to various sexual tribulations, Kyôko remains defiant and even manages to play the role of a dominatrix in an attempt to escape. But this defiance is punished in a method so harsh that the "lessons" Shizuko is learning about her own inner-darkness seem trivial in comparison.

If you've got a strong tolerance (or perhaps even a taste) for deviant sexual horseplay and maybe feel that a movie like Eyes Wide Shut fell well shy of the kind of deviance director Stanley Kubrick wanted to capture, then Flower and Snake may well be a good match for you. As mentioned above, however, casual viewers pick this one with their eyes wide open to what awaits. This is not American style soft-play. Often rough and vulgar, it may very well disgust rather than excite.