Showtimes: 6/18, 11:00pm and 6/25, 6:30pm at the Anthology [BUY TICKETS]

This is a date movie for people who don't like date movies. It's a flick that celebrates sex without being skeevy, a film that says sex isn't dirty, but a simple fact of life. If you're tired of Hollywood sex scenes with their sanitized soft focus lovin', then A SNAKE OF JUNE is the antidote.

Rinko (Asuka Kurosawa) is a nice married lady who works the hotline at a mental health clinic. One day, a former caller contacts her and begins to sexually blackmail her. He's got pictures of her masturbating and he'll send them to her anal-retentive, cleanliness-obsessed husband if she doesn't do what he says. What does he want her to do? Walk around in public with no underwear on. Make friends with a remote-controlled vibrator he sends her. That kind of stuff.

She's horrified, but decides she doesn't have a choice, and actually begins to enjoy the break from routine. Then she gets diagnosed with breast cancer, the blackmailer steps up his demands, her husband not only begins to suspect what's going on but starts going to an underground sex club and as hormones explode like supernovas, everyone begins to drown in a sticky whirlpool of sex.

Ever since his TETSUO: THE IRON MAN ground its way onto the scene back in 1988, its organic metal gears dripping with grease, Shinya Tsukamoto has been a one-man army. He directs, writes, composes the music for, art designs, shoots, edits and frequently stars in movies that could not have come from anyone else. When people compare movies to art, they're talking about Shinya Tsukamoto without even realizing it. Take a frame from one of his movies and it's instantly recognizable. Take a plot twist (man's penis turns into a drill; remote-controlled vibrator arrives in the mail) and it you know it's his. His movies are agitated, electro-charged, hopped up on rage, as twitchy and lethal as a strung-out crystal meth dealer waiting for you in a dark alley.

But with A SNAKE OF JUNE he's doing something else. The chronicler of body failure, degradation, flesh rejection, pain and violence has started celebrating life. And he's being sincere. Sex isn't dirty to Tsukamoto, it's a way to fight back against the dehumanizing world around us. It's a loaded weapon, a tool of liberation. We've all got it, and Tsukamoto has decided that it's time to take off the safety.