Aroused by Gymnopedies (4 Stars)

This is the first film in the Roman Porn Reboot series, released in November 2016. The name sent me scurrying to my computer to look for an online dictionary. I'd never heard the word Gymnopedies before. My guess was that it refers to athletes' feet. I wasn't even close. The Gymnopedies were a group of three piano compositions written by Erik Satie in 1888. They were inspired by the Gymnopaedia, a festival in ancient Sparta in which naked men danced. The Gymnopedies, all three of them, are used as the film's soundtrack.

The film is about an ageing film director called Shin Furuya. He's highly respected after making a number of critically acclaimed films, but they weren't successful at the box office. Now he's almost broke. His wife is in hospital in a coma after a car accident. He can't afford to pay the medical bills, so the hospital is threatening to send her home. I thought things like that only happened in America.

When he's not making movies, Shin is a guest lecturer at a university, but even that doesn't make him enough money. He's surrounded by young actors, mostly female, who look up to him in admiration, but he doesn't want admiration, he wants money. He asks women for money, and he even steals from one woman, but they don't want to give him money, they just want sex with him. That seems to be his curse. Wherever he goes, young women are tearing their clothes off and seducing him, whether it's actresses, students or even the nurse looking after his wife.

As for the film's title, I wonder if it's a mistranslation. "Aroused by Gymnopedies" sounds like something erotic, but in the context of the film it's different. When the film begins, Shin remembers his wife playing the Gymnopedies on the piano in a room full of beautiful flowers. Now that she's gone the flowers are dry and withered. At the end of the film one of his (many) girlfriends is sitting at the piano playing the Gymnopedies, and the flowers are in a good state again. Should the title be "Revived by Gymnopedies"? 

This is the film poster. Can any of my readers who understand Japanese please tell me what the exact translation of the title is?

The film is a lot more arousing than "Dawn of the Felines", which I watched yesterday. It's not because the actresses are more beautiful (although they are), it's because the scenes are more glamorous. I know nothing about the director Isao Yukisada, except that he's received multiple awards at international film festivals.

The five films in the Roman Porno Reboot series are

• Aroused by Gymnopedies (26. November 2016), directed by Isao Yukisada
• Wet Woman in the Wind (17. December 2016), directed by Akihiko Shiota
• Dawn of the Felines (14. January 2017), directed by Kazuya Shiraishi
• Antiporno (28. January 2017), directed by Sion Sono
• White Lily (11. February 2017), directed by Hideo Nakata