Nagisa Oshima’s erotic classic from 1976, Ai No Corrida (In The Realm Of The Senses) is finally to be shown in Ireland. A powerful study of human sexuality, it relates the moving and disturbing true story of a couple who turn their back on militaristic Japanese life (circa 1936) to create an erotic world of their own. The film celebrates their passionate obsession, even as it tracks it to a shockingly inevitable conclusion. The sheer gravity of Oshima’s film-making sets Ai No Corrida aside from soft porn like 91/2 Weeks, but its problems with the censors have stemmed from the hard core activities of the lead actors. To put it delicately, they clearly did all their own stunts.

But of course, it is not simply the sex scenes that the censors objected to, otherwise the vast majority of movies would never get released. Nowadays we are as familiar with most actresses’ genitalia as their gynaecologists, whilst actors are so intent on showing us their buttocks you wonder why they don’t all become rugby players instead.

But, lets face it, buttocks aren’t really in the same league as genitalia. You only have to walk past a building site to see more male buttocks than in Derek Jarman’s entire cinematic oeuvre put together. But until Alan Bates and Oliver Reed got their cocks out for a spot of nude wrestling in Ken Russell’s 1969 Women In Love, you could be forgiven for thinking actors did not posses the same sexual organs as the rest of us. Despite occasional further glimpses (Donald Sutherland displayed the tube from which a sperm called Keifer shot in Nicholas Roeg’s 1972 Don’t Look Now) penises (or is the plural of penis peni?) in the movies have remained in very short supply.

Until recently. Nowadays you can hardly go to the cinema without having a penis thrust in your face, usually Harvey Keitel’s (who got Little Harv out in Bad Lieutenant and The Piano, although he had previously given him an airing in James Toback’s 1978 Fingers). Robin William’s showed us the only part of his body that isn’t hairy all over in The Fisher King, while Michael Douglas and Richard Gere have allowed quick glimpses, perhaps as a form of subliminal advertising. Now Bruce Willis has joined what is an exceedingly small members only club, letting it all hang out underwater with Jane March (an actress who probably wouldn’t know what to do if the director told her to put her clothes on) in the forthcoming Color Of Night. A woman friend who saw Bruce’s effort was not impressed. “Ugly, flaccid, bald and wrinkly,” she complained. “And then he has the nerve to show his dick as well!”

The problem with onscreen organs is that all they succeed in doing is make the movie star appear impotent. There he is, romping around with some naked aerobic beauty while his penis dangles disinterestedly between them, less like a love truncheon than an uncooked chipolata. For if the offending member should rise to an angle above 45 degrees, the censors immediately move in with their scissors - truly the unkindest cut of all.

So what to make of the release of Ai No Corrida, where Tatsuya Fujii’s in-built (and unbilled) co-star does indeed rise to the task in hand (and in mouth and every other orifice)? Will this presage a veritable tidal wave of erections being unleashed on screen?

A BIT OF CRUTCH

I recently spoke to porn baron David Sullivan, who made his multi-millions in the sex trade but now concentrates on his interests in Birmingham City football team. “The gap between mainstream films and sex films has shrunk,” he said. “You’ve got films like 91/2 Weeks and what was that Michael Douglas film with the bird opening her legs? Basic Instinct - where you see a bit of crutch. And you’ve got simulated sex in this, that and the other, and that’s mainstream films. You’ve got stuff on TV with pubic hair and penises. The gap is so small now its hardly worth making a porn movie. There’s not been a successful sex film without a big star in it for years. There’s not been an Emanuelle, which was a comparatively small budget film which did fantastic.”

Sullivan produced a number of sex films in the seventies, including Come Play With Me, starring Mary Millington, which remains the most successful British sex movie of all time. “But there’s actually something quaint about it now,” he comments. “At the time it was pushing the edge of what you could get away with. You look at it now, its like a quaint old film. I’m sure one day it’ll wind up on BBC or ITV because its now perfectly acceptable, like a cross between an Ealing comedy and a Carry on.”

But if erections were to become acceptable in the cinema, other problems would certainly arise. Or not arise, as the case may be. In his recent autobiography, Marlon Brando reveals that Bernardo Bertolucci persuaded him to appear with an erection for Last Tango In Paris but the actor suffered his only ever attack of stage fright. Try as he might, he couldn’t get it up. Carl and Annie are a couple who both work in the sex industry, primarily as strippers. They were asked to star in Better Orgasms II, one of the recent batch of so-called educational videos featuring explicit sex. They were paid £1,000 each to spend a day copulating, which was certainly Carl’s idea of gainful employment. But even this self-confessed exhibitionist found he had a problem when it came to performing for the cameras.

“When I saw the equipment there, and the camera crew, all of a sudden I’ve realised hundreds of people are going to see this,” he told me. “I started to think about my mum and my brother all seeing it, and I’ve just frozen, I couldn’t get hard. Prior to that, at the rehearsals, everything was fine. But in front of the cameras it just wouldn’t happen. They said to us, ‘You two go off into a private room,’ and they had the cameras, everything ready, and they had somebody on the pathway, so as soon as I got my erection I shouted out ‘I’m ready!’, they shouted out to the camera crew, ‘Ready, set,’ and I’m running onto the scene and I jump on the bed and it was flat! I went ‘Oh fuck!’ and went out to try it again. It was a comical scene. And the funny thing is, as soon as I got home, I fucked her rotten! I was going ‘Fucking hell, you bastard, where have you been?’”

Somehow I doubt that erections are about to become the next big thing.

Ai No Corrida runs at Dublin's IFC from Friday October 7th to Friday October 14th.

THE CORK FILM FESTIVAL

The 39th Cork Film Festival takes place between the 2nd and 9th of October. Full details were not confirmed at press time, but the usual high-calibre, international programme is promised, hopefully featuring Quentin Tarantino’s powerhouse thriller Pulp Fiction, The Cohen brother’s imaginative comedy The Hudsucker Proxy, Krzyzstof Kieslowski’s masterful conclusion to his Three Colours series, Red, and other new titles from Claude Chabrol, Patrice Leconte, Tim Burton, Hal Hartley and Atom Egoyan. David Puttnam will adress a seminar on the Irish film industry, and acclaimed British documentary maker Nick Broomfield will be on hand to discuss his work.

The venues will be the Cork Opera House and Triskel Arts Centre. Further information 021 271711.