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Bounce Ko Gals

1997, Movie, NR, 110 mins

Bounce Ko Gals: Review

BOUNCE KO GALS | LEAVING
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School-girl sex rackets! Teen prostitutes trading sex for designer clothes! Despite the lurid material, director Masato Harada's intelligent drama takes a refreshingly non-exploitative look at Japan's real-life sex industry and its relationship to an increasingly youth-oriented consumer culture. Seventeen-year-old Lisa (Yukiko Okamoto) arrives in Tokyo with her passport, plane ticket and the 300,000 yen she's saved to help start a new life in New York City. With a whole day to kill before her flight leaves the following morning, Lisa heads for the flashy Shibuya district — ground zero for Tokyo's trendy teen culture — where she knows certain shops will pay top yen for panties that have been worn by ko gyaru — high-school girls. The proprietress (Kaori Momoi) also arranges for Lisa to appear in a video — nothing too nasty, just fetish stuff involving school uniforms and balloons — but once the shooting starts, the apartment is raided by a gang of thugs who steal Lisa's money and threaten to rape her. Lisa and Raku (Yasue Sato), another ko gyaru, beat a hasty retreat, but without money Lisa can't possibly move to New York. In order to help Lisa raise some fast cash, Raku first sets her up on a number of "paid dates" with older men — Raku promises she won't actually have to have sex with them, just a little karaoke and conversation. Then she introduces Lisa to Jonko (Hitomi Sato), a mature-beyond-her-years "ko gal" who's playing a much more dangerous game. Jonko not only zaps her dates with a stun gun before stealing their money, but is still plying her trade after being threatened by aging yakuza Mr. Oshima (Koji Yakusho), who knows the girls can offer clients something his seasoned sex workers can't: youth. Welcome to the world of the ko gals, teenaged girls who fund their trendy lifestyles by "entertaining" strangers. Many rely on the popular telephone dating clubs to arrange their dates, others work in conjunction with the teenage "talent scouts" or "bar mamas" who arrange dates for a commission. Still others simply hang out in Shibuya or Roppongi, meeting men who take them to the districts' love hotels. But rather than portraying these girls as one-dimensional victims, Harada offers a complex portrait of teenagers who've learned to make their exploitation work for them. Hip to the sexual tastes of Japanese men and obsessed with pricey name brand goods, the ko gals willingly turn themselves into commodities in order to become better consumers. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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