By chance, Murahashi (Akira Ishihama) comes to sit in the dentist's
chair next to Chieko's (Kanako Michi), and he falls in love with her
almost immediately - but that's when the anesthetics kick in and he starts
to hallucinate about her being raped by the dentist (Chojuro Hanakawa) in
her chair. Then he daydreams about her being a nightclub singer being owned
by the dentist. Murahashi tries to persuade her to escape with him, but
she just can't. Another daydream shows Murahashi on the balcony of her
apartment, looking in as she is tortured by the dentist, unable to get in.
He ultimately meets her at a playground, where the two of them make plans
to escape which involve her hiding in a closed department store - but once
there, she bumps into the dentist, who chases her through the store before
finally raping her. The next day, she wakes up in the store, nude, picks
herself a kimono and leaves the place as inconspicously as possible - but
she runs into Murahashi, who calls her a whore and stabs her to death in
the middle of a busy sidewalk. When he tries to call some attention onto
what he's done though, nobody seems to be the least interested in the
half-naked blood-soaked corpse lying there. Murahashi awakes from
anesthesia just when Chieko is about to leave the dentist's place, and he
makes up an excuse to go after her. Ultimately, they leave together, and
only the bitemarks Chieko suddenly finds on her body suggest that
Murahashi's daydream might not have been a daydream after all. Nowadays,
Daydream is known first and foremost for being the first pink movie
by a major Japanese studio going into mass release, but actually, that's
selling the achievements of the film short, as Daydream is a
fascinatingly delirious piece of erotic cinema that has more to do with
French nouvelle vague than the usual skinflick produced during the
time all around the world, a film that is made up of striking images and
an in-depth exploration of dom-sub-relationships, all wrapped up in a
story that follows the logic of nightmares. A truly fascinating film.
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