While i most likely won’t be reviewing the new Wuthering Heights film adaptation, to prove my platonical love for you, the audience, i will review this film i found on DVD in a flea market, and no, it wasn’t on the porn section.
I know i had to get it, it was like, 5 bucks at max, and with a title that screams “CINEMA” as IKU gets a IGN certified “10 out of 10” just for reference-pun combo that is the subtitle “I, Robosex” added in the Italian DVD release.
Sometimes i get to find import DVD copies of weird state sponsored video art when i go thrifting, sometimes i pick up fully localized and officially distributed “technically not porn” like this.
So, the hell is this?
Directed by Shu Lea Cheung, IKU is the tale of Reiko, whom indeed is “one of them japanese sex robutts”, a literal sex robot programmed to accumulate sexual experience, and she does so by swapping/morphin into seven body types, for her to return to the company, have them download the data, and then try to escape from their control.
Does this seems like a flimsy compromise of a plot because they wanted to do more than a simple porn film, specifically to mix it with some high concept arthouse style stuff?
Remember, this isn’t just porn, this is avant garde digital roboporn, after all, so of course we go with the Blade Runner ending reference as a conclusion to a film with digital effects of fisting tongue-dicks that i’m not sure would have been approved by Dan Varkholme.
And eventually a fish getting in the way, i guess this is related to the Bill Viola film i featured time ago, and as far as i will get to reviewing something called NAMI.. for now.
As i was saying, the Blade Runner ending just makes sense.
I joke, the movie opens with a recreation of the origami unicorn scene and line, then they pork in the elevator. Then pork with some digital special effects that do fit the digital nature to do weird ass shit all the time and show impossible angles and visuals, while text dumps with images give us the worldbuilding, which just further drives home the “Blade Runner porno spoof gone vaguely arthouse” vibe, when we don’t get assaulted by wild camera angles swinging to simulate a trip that includes very cyberpunky green vector graphics orgasms and glitchy shit doing a bump of shrooms before ringing Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost In The Shell (her manga persona, anyway) and ask if she wants to do a VR threesome or something.
To further discuss the “plot” would be pointless, as there’s literally no more “plot” to discuss, and what there is serves as “glue” to hold together into some sorta structured logic the debauchery of crotch shots where you can feel the bush stank, vector graphics computer renderings of coitus, or status screens to let know how much “sex data” 10 seconds of fingering got Reiko, then we see very videogamey text that basically amounts to “proceed to next sex stage”, and while most of the sex is hetero, there is some lesbian and even male gay representation.
There is a seeding of a plot, that there is an actual story being told instead of suggested by stuff like “getting robo syphilis”, some gay dudes meeting the Mermaid Sisters, and text that feels like hints or suggestions given to the characters by someone else, but like fuckin Destiny or Anthem, it’s not in the actual film, it’s in the DVD manual or flyer/supplement, apparently. i would like to comment on this, but at the moment i don’t have access to the DVD case and what was inside, just the DVD itself, i’m not even sure my used copy had any extra material inside when i found it used.
What i got of the “plot” is basically porno Blade Runner, as someone is trying to free these androids and gynoids built for sex, there’s a black guy with dreads, trenchcoat and a dildo gun labeled “IKU Runner”, who i assume plays the role of Deckard, but instead of executing replicants send Reiko to collect “exctasy data” so the GENOM corporation (not related to the one in Bubble Gum Crisis, i assume) can sell I.K.U, as in suppository/bullet shaped sex drugs for the mind to enjoy?
Then they escape the corporation in a car like the end of Blade Runner?
Still have no idea who the guy dressed like a construction worker or the policewoman were.
I’ll be honest, i have no fuckin clue what the actual plot is, and no, the DVD extra do not contain shit in this regard, just a making of, an interview with the director, and an alternate finale that just swaps Reiko for one of the male gay sex robots, big whoop.
That is the reason why i feel this doesn’t quite work as intended, teasing you with a plot among the porn that just isn’t in the goddamn actual film but has to be found on a website, manual or somewhere else. Kinda fits the “Y2K” feel, in a way, but even if there’s complementary material that does help in this regard… there’s just too much teasing only to then blueball my brain.
To say nothing of the premise feeling like a spin-off of √964 Pinocchio of sorts, but figured they were gonna rip-off/riff-off Blade Runner instead of that Tetsuo Body Hammer-inspired film.
It’s still interesting but just as a curiosity, an experience, like this, though i do wonder what the hell the cut version (that apparently was shown around in some cinema clubs or something) did look like and how even more confusing to try and squeeze a plot from that must have been.
The director if nothing else kept busy, and the latest opus from them is something called UKI (the poster is some amazing Xavier Renegade Angel shit), which does feature the reversal of IKU’s slogan, that being “this is not love: this is sex”, fittingly enough.
Can’t fault an avant gard sci-fi porn (even one that uses terms and even imagery from Blade Runner) for telling you this ain’t about the fluttering waves of affection supreme (or making philosophical observations), this is about indeed about fucking, that’s some sincerity right there.
So that was indeed quite the something, that i’m sure Gaspar Noel had to see at some point, would be weirder if he didn’t.
I mean, this actually, genuinely screened at Sundance, for fuck’s sake, and guess what, most there just up and left during the projection, bunch of posers.
Wise Cafe (International) 