That was brutal... but it's middle-of-the-road for Daisuke Yamanouchi's Female Loan Shark movies. I think these are:
- 2015 = Female Loan Shark Yuri: A Garden of Nights Writhing in Shame = i.e. this one
- 2017 = Female Loan Shark Chizuru: Money-Covered Sex Hell = the only one I couldn't find
- 2018 = Female Loan Shark Maki = even more horrific than Yuri
- 2019 = Female Loan Shark Chizuru: The Temptation of a Beautiful Beast Who Feeds on Sexual Desire = a surprisingly tame sequel to the 2017 film, again starring Iori Kogawa as Chizuru
I started here with the first of the series. Bloody hell. Theoretically, it's softcore porn, but it's also nasty and miserable enough that only sick people will find it arousing. Shunka Ayami (hardcore porn star) plays Yuri, a merciless loan shark. She's pushes her victims so far that people get stabbed to death. She might be watching calmly at the door as gangsters semi-torture a woman. (The victim gets tied up, gagged, blindfolded and sprayed with a shower.) Water's a motif of this film. One thug gets murdered by drowning in the bath, while another piece of human garbage was in danger of meeting the same fate... but in a small bowl of water that's been placed on the floor in front of him. (He's stripped, tied up, blindfolded and getting his face forced into it.)
Yuri only lends to women and her desperate clients are all being exploited by a vile man. An idol's forced into prostitution. Another woman is pleading "not the face" as her boyfriend's about to punch her, so instead he gives her a kicking... and then later sends her back to the loan shark for more cash.
Yuri herself is also a victim, though. Rape? Prostitution? She didn't choose this job, but now she's having discussions about the best extortion methods. (Which is better: terror or uncertainty?) Ultimately, to our surprise, she shows a flash of altruism. "Why Yuri did that, nobody knows." Far away, in a foreign country, there's someone she's helping.
The sexual side is unpleasant. A coerced prostitution threesome with your mother? The acting can be dodgy, but it's mostly okay. I like Manzo Shinra, who often appears in films like this and is great at playing heavies. The tone is cold as hell, with almost everyone being either a reptilian son-of-a-bitch or an exploited victim (often voluntarily and you'll be screaming at her to dump her evil boyfriend). Or, in the case of Yuri, both. Carving knives will be used, repeatedly.
This is a skin flick... but it's also an ice-cold trip into hell from Daisuke Yamanouchi. Don't expect to enjoy it, but I respect it.
