Made in 2004 by Shinji Imaoka, Lunch Box is, quite simply, a rather surreal, weird, dark-hued and sad pink film. However, as with most pink films, if you came here expecting anything like the Western equivalent of the soft porn skin flick, you’ve definitely come to the wrong place.
In this movie, the sex scenes are tenderly observed as in a romanporno (the genre-word for a ‘romantic porno’ film), coy in places but no less effective for that. However, unlike in Western softcore movies, the sex in this movie is not necessarily the whole point. Indeed, most Japanese sex filmmaking of this calibre tries to elevate itself into the arthouse genre, and this movie is no exception. Throughout, there’s a subtle social commentary in the subtext about the place of women in Japanese society, and Lunch Box feels at times like the director is almost delivering a chauvinist-conservative apology, by using the age-old excuse that all a woman really wants to do is stay at home, pleasing her man in the bedroom and the kitchen.
Significantly, though, it’s told from a woman’s point of view here; as the main female character controls every aspect of her partner’s wellbeing and happiness, her position is initially presented as a position of power, but power which is slowly eroded due to her passive and vulnerable place in society, until she has nothing left.