Is there a body part that is not, for someone, an erogenous zone? Feet have their fans. So do eyes, noses and, as Hiroshi Horiuchi's "Mimi wo Kaku Onna (The Ear Cleaner)" makes clear, ears.
But in this third theatrical film by Horiuchi, following a documentary about folk musician Hitoshi Kaji and the ensemble drama "Watashi no Kanashimi (My Sorrow)," both released this year, the eroticism on display is mild indeed by today's standards. Compared with the arms race playing out on Internet porn sites (Bigger! Faster! Stranger!), "Mimi wo Kaku Onna" is positively restrained, if not repressed.
Instead it gently, sexily, celebrates the passion that many Japanese share — and many outlanders find puzzling — for having their ears cleaned. This is no mere kink for horny men, but rather a traditional, innocent pleasure that mothers give to their children, wives to their tired husbands, using picks that look vaguely like dental tools, with the recipient's head on their lap and mind often in the clouds.