Profound Desires of the Gods

Profound Desires of the Gods (神々の深き欲望) is Shōhei Imamura's final fiction film for almost a decade, shown in a screening at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Set on the fictional island of Kurage, said to have been forged by discarded objects thrown by incestuous brother and sister gods, it follows the outcast Futori family and Kariya, a Tokyo engineer sent to oversee the opening of a sugar manufacturing facility. Beneath the island's paradisiacal surface of lush forests and turquoise seas, Kariya discovers deep-rooted superstitions, privation and duplicities, and over the months he is slowly drawn into the Futori family's way of life. Tracing Japan's evolution from the agrarian to the industrial, the primitive to the modern, the film examines the entire strata of a society while insisting that our foundations remain as desirous and ritualistic as ever.