miguelreina

7/10

[MUBI] Masao Adichi was a collaborator of Nagisa Oshima and Kôjî Wakamatsu, but above all he was a left-wing political activist. In fact, "Gushin prayer: A 15-year-old prostitute" (1971) is one of his last films before joining the Red Army and living for twenty-eight years in Lebanon. He had previously made other "pink films" such as "Sei chitai: Sex zone" (1968), and had presented two films as a screenwriter at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival: "Violated angels" (1967) and "Sex Jack" (1970), both directed by Kôjî Wakamatsu. In "Gushin prayer" the director introduces four teenagers who become aware of their sexuality, but at the same time wonder if they can "beat sex." The protagonist, Yasuko, tries to discover through her sexual intercourse if she is capable of feeling her own body. One of these relationships with a teacher causes her pregnancy, and therefore she is considered a prostitute by her friends. In a way, it is a contradictory reading with that sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies, in which the body is the object of vindication. But Masao Adachi turns it into a political element, an instrument of acceptance of an identity and a reflection of "the way society is blocked", in his own words. In reality, more than as a representative film of the "pink films", "Gushin prayer" is revealed as a description of youth in a time of social upheaval. What, apart from the representation of the feminine as an object of sexual abuse (Yasuko is abused by the teacher, but there is also verbal abuse in the way her friends treat her), is also reflected in the verbalization across the story of real letters left by teenagers before committing suicide.