In my opinion, I can say it is full of bizarre imagery, stark juxtapositions of colors, shadow and light, it moves along to a jarring, dissonant music score, and the director frequently uses odd angles to film what's going on, or inverts the image to have characters speak to each other "upside down." It's a very stylish and interesting approach to film-making.

As for the story, it takes place in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s. The movie opens with a dinner feast. By the sumptuous quantity and quality of the food, the guests are clearly members of the affluent elite, but they do not bother with good table manners, rather they ravenously gorge on the food with their hands. Bare-breasted young women docilely serve the diners.

However, the decadence doesn't stop there. The host is a middle-aged aristocrat, bespectacled and slight of build. A marquis himself, he is fascinated by the infamous writings of the notorious Frenchman de Sade, and wishes to live a life of fantasy and vice.

He therefore gathers an entourage of like minded friends and hires miscellaneous petty criminals to be actors in his private theater. Night after night, scenes from de Sade's novels are acted out. Crime and sin are celebrated.

Historically at this time, Japan was as hard hit by the Great Depression as the Western nations, and a young generation of army officers were also plotting to bring a more militarist regime to power, which will culminate in Japan's war with China and eventually the United States.

Therefore, it can be interpreted that for the marquis and his clique, acting out de Sade's lurid fiction serves as an escape from reality. The marquis and his wife Tamae themselves participate in the theater, not content to be merely spectators.

A complication however arises when the marquis brings a young thief into his household and asks him to rape Tamae. The thief is shocked by such an unheard of request and balks, but the marquis threatens him with death and imprisonment if he refuses.

The young man thus barges into Tamae's bedroom one night and throws himself upon her. She resists at first, but gives in rather quickly, knowing that her husband is discreetly watching from a hole in the wall, eagerly enjoying the role of voyeur to satisfy his perverse desires.

The thief and Tamae gradually form a closer bond, arousing the jealousy of the marquis. He had always envisioned her as his play-thing, molding her to be, and do as he wishes, particularly to act as Justine, a character from de Sade's novel of the same name.

There are several scenes where the marquis and his wife's interactions alternate between the stage, rehearsals before the stage, or the aftermath of the performance, a dizzying use of the "play-within-a-play" story-telling technique. Reality and fantasy blur and jealousies and obsessions torment the various characters. Several murders are committed and the movie ends enigmatically with the marquis alone on his ruined stage.

As I mentioned earlier, what it all means is quite elusive, and will probably vary from viewer to viewer. I have never actually read de Sade although I have heard of him, and I have seen available on this very hkflix.com website several European adaptations that presumably offer much stronger, more explicit sex.

I bought this title mainly out of curiosity, because present day Hollywood producers favor, in my view, dumbed down "family friendly" PG-13 blockbusters that safely make lots of money, but I want to take a peek at more provocative, more controversial, and more unusual fare than what one normally gets in a suburban USA megaplex.

However, I can't say I've yet figured out what to make of this movie. Maybe I'll have to brave reading through the novels, or watch the film several more times.

Never the less, I will say that the sex presented here is infrequent and not all that explicit, less so than even some mainstream R-rated movies. Nudity is mainly limited to shots of bare female breasts or buttocks, but there's no genitalia or full frontal nudity. There is also limited S&M. If you're looking for lots of intense sex, you'll probably be disappointed. I found the miscellaneous trailers on the disk offered much better soft-core sex scenes.

I give the film high marks for artistic style and visual creativeness, but the movie rambles on and seemed much longer than its 96 minute run time. I never felt any clear sense of where it was supposed to be heading, and the ending was rather anti-climactic.

If I could have previewed this movie online for a fraction of the price, I would never have bought it. However, if you like cerebral, enigmatic movies that obliquely explore sexual obsession, this might still be for you.