Ayumi (Reiko Kataoka) juggles between her work as a call-girl and a life with a boyfriend unable to get into college. Soon, she meets Rei (Sawa Suzuki), a seasoned dominatrix aspiring to become a theater actor, who spends her free time rehearsing with a troupe that blurs the line between the stage and the bedroom. At the terminus of the Japanese Bubble era – evoked brilliantly here by neon-lit streets and chic interiors  – both women bring the viewer into their nocturnal orbit, into a life dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure, camaraderie and the joys of hanging out in the then-thriving – and perpetually horny – districts of Shinjuku and Shibuya.

Marketed in some territories as a quasi-sequel to Ryu Murakami’s moody Tokyo Decadence (1992), Banmei Takahashi’s A New Love in Tokyo unfolds as its tonal opposite: less a somber sexploitation film than an unexpectedly sex-positive workplace comedy ripe for rediscovery. An unexpected film based on a  book of essays by Kei Shimamoto that brings the reader into a bustling erotic underworld, it is also notable for featuring cult photographer Nobuyoshi Araki as one of its key collaborators: his photographs setting the tone and punctuating the story. A glimpse into a bygone era of Japanese eroticism, A New Love in Tokyo provides pinku and V-cinema veteran (and Director’s Company alumn) Banmei Takahashi (Door, Door II, Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes the Bullet) with a bridge towards a wider range of human experience.