The varieties of love are many: From the chaste and platonic, to the sexually uninhibited and emotionally obsessed. In a long career as a pinku eiga (pink film) director Yuji Tajiri has concentrated on the latter end of the scale, but in his latest film, "Koppamijin (Broken Pieces)," he makes a successful, not-unexpected swing to the former.
Pinku films accounted for a large share of Japanese films produced in the 1970s and came to be defined as short features, shot on 35 mm film and including a scene of simulated bonking every 10 minutes or so. Shown in specialized theaters, mostly located in Japan's many red-light districts, they were gradually supplanted, first by pornographic videos, then DVDs, and now the limitless supply of adult websites catering to every taste. But Tajiri soldiered on through the genre's long decline, making "OL no Aijiri: Love Juice" (Known abroad primarily as "No Love Juice: Rustling in Bed" and "Office Lady Love Juice") in 1999 — a pink film masterpiece about an oddly matched couple's nakedly revealing (in all senses) tryst. Winner of domestic honors, including a Japan Movie Professional Award and a Pink Grand Prix, "Love Juice" also screened to acclaim abroad, receiving a special audience award at the 2002 Udine Far East Film Festival.
Premiering at the Nippon Connection festival in Frankfurt in May, "Broken Pieces" begins as a romantic drama of the unrequited-love sort. Kaede (Miwako Wagatsuma), a 20-year-old apprentice hairdresser, is drifting through life with a menial job she doesn't like and a rocky relationship she wants to escape. Then she hears that Takuya (Mukau Nakamura), a crush from her childhood, has returned to her provincial town after six years in Tokyo. She desperately wants to reconnect but her fumbling attempts to rekindle their former friendship, are brusquely snuffed out by the dishy-looking, but emotionally distant Takuya. Has her one true love turned stone cold?