Films this year:
46. Noboru Tanaka, Shikijo mesu ichiba (The Erotic Female Market, 1974)
Osaka is another country, and within Osaka, Nishinari is a desperately precarious working class district. The film depicts a prostitute's life there with a surprisingly fresh and often experimental filmic language.
Overall story is rather corny. But when the white and black narrative becomes fully colored in order to prepare for the mythical sequence of her brother's aimless wandering in the city, the effect is amazing and beautiful.
The film is particularly brilliant outside. Made as a Roman-Porn film, it is way too lyrical to be simply erotic.
