Synopsis

A penniless twenty-five-year-old with a passion for cinema, Alex Merisi has been living in Tokyo for two years on a student visa. Odd jobs as a photographer and cameraman allow him to make ends meet, but they certainly don't fill the void that drove an Italian boy raised in England and soon orphaned by his mother to seek a future in the land of the Rising Sun. Then, suddenly, Alex manages to get his hands on a large sum of money that could change his life. This unexpected wealth coincides with his first opportunity to work as an assistant director on Japanese film productions, naturally starting at the lowest level: that of adult films. Thus begins Alex's initiatory journey into the dark and sprawling underbelly of Tokyo at the turn of the millennium, which will soon swallow him up, dragging him into the vortex of the "murky waters" of pornography. A universe populated by characters as demonic as they are, at times, childish and playful: tattoo artists who also teach life, members of the yakuza. And by women often immortalized in extreme situations, female figures who embody, with their stark contradictions, the diverse souls of a civilization where the contrast between light and shadow is at times blinding: thus emerges Aya's melancholic surrender, Megumi's painful courage, Tomomi's unshakeable wisdom. With a spare yet captivating style, Mario Vattani depicts a dark and sensual reality, so distant it seems almost paradoxical and perhaps for this reason even more realistic. And little by little, without realizing it, we readers establish such a vivid connection with words, flavors, and rules of behavior that Alex's Japanese experience becomes a bit like our own.