Meet Sada Abe and her man, spending some quality time together forever and ever.
I believe this was the first movie made about Sada Abe. “A Woman Called Sada Abe” was made a year before the more famous one based on this true story, “In the Realm of the Senses.”
“A Woman Called Sada Abe” and “In the Realm of the Senses” have a lot in common. We follow two lovers who enjoy themselves and sort of isolate themselves inside a room, having fun for the most part, except when they try something new that turns out to be fatal for one of them.
I have to compare “A Woman Called Sada Abe” against “In the Realm of the Senses” since they are based on the same story, and there’s not a lot of difference between the two movies.
The actors in “In the Realm of the Senses” are better, especially the male actor. He is a really good actor, as you can check out on IMDb, while the male actor in “A Woman Called Sada Abe” is just awful. He has no charisma and seems tired when the movie begins. That wasn’t the case with the male actor in “In the Realm of the Senses.” You could see that he was growing tired of being used by Sada Abe, and you felt and witnessed that his life force was drained out of him because Sada Abe was obsessed with him.
The woman who plays Sada Abe in “A Woman Called Sada Abe” is, for the most part, a better actress than the one in “In the Realm of the Senses.” She is better in the emotional scenes, but she’s weaker towards the end of the movie. I didn’t feel that she was as obsessed with her lover as the actress who played her in “In the Realm of the Senses.” That actress was so clingy, and you could almost sense the smell from her body filling up your room while giving you some unwanted diseases. She is a nasty piece of work! But she was excellent in the obsession department.
The runtime of “A Woman Called Sada Abe” is much shorter than that of “In the Realm of the Senses.” And that’s fine because the movie doesn’t have much to tell us about the couple and the crazy, obsessed protagonist. The dialogue between the two lovers in “In the Realm of the Senses” is much better and deeper, while in “A Woman Called Sada Abe,” the director just skims the surface of these two characters and their relationship.
The erotic scenes are pretty bad and don’t stand a chance against what you see and experience in “In the Realm of the Senses.” They are quite tame and not sexy enough. Especially when they try something new, playing a dangerous game that looks quite ridiculous because of how Sada Abe handles the rope. It was much more intense and realistic in “In the Realm of the Senses.”
I wasn’t a huge fan of this movie, and I wasn’t a huge fan of “In the Realm of the Senses” either. But “In the Realm of the Senses” is a better and deeper movie. I think I initially gave it a 4/10, which is too low, so I adjusted that to 6/10 since “A Woman Called Sada Abe” is a weaker movie.