クールに遊ぼう (aka Play It Cool) (1970)

A student (Mari Atsumi) shares a cramped home with her mother (Akemi Negishi), a "hostess" at a bar. When her mother's live in lover (Ryoichi Tamagawa) rapes the daughter (who's a virgin), the mother kills him by stabbing him to death. Left alone when her mother is sent to prison, the daughter begins her journey as a "hostess" in Tokyo's pleasure bars but she vows not to make her mother's mistakes and becomes a sex worker on her own terms. Based on the novel by Masayuki Toyama and directed by Yasuzo Masumura (BLIND BEAST). Walking a fine line between exploitation and legitimate melodrama, Masumura's film is an engrossing twist on mother/daughter love. This is no STELLA DALLAS, the two women are essentially prostitutes leading sordid lives and it's closer to NIGHTS OF CABIRIA than the mother sacrificing STELLA DALLAS. Men are predators in this atmosphere and Mari Atsumi's innocent student turned call girl makes them pay through the nose for her "favors". In its own way, this is a feminist film. Atsumi turns her victimization into an angry but potent weapon against a society that exploits its women. With Yusuke Kawazu and Ko Nishimura.