“Soft and warm and it felt good” is how Mrs. Miyano, the main character in Lily Festival, describes her not-so-turgid lover. She has been mourning the mid-courtship death of a close female "friend" and neighbor in her apartment building when the artsy Mr. Miyoshi, a leather-pants-wearing playboy, moves into the woman-occupied building. We are introduced to the various occupants of the suburban apartment house through viciously hilarious narrator flashbacks of each character as they vie for Miyoshi’s attention. He proceeds to sweep Mrs. Miyano and several of her lady neighbors off their feet and into bed, through gentle charm and in some cases using the same exact pickup line. Gossip and jealousy wreak havoc on the quiet community until a dinner party confrontation reveals Mr. Miyoshi’s philanderings.

A timeshare plan is arranged among some of the women, but Mrs. Miyano chooses instead to start an exclusive relationship with her neighbor Mrs. Yokota. What makes this movie different from a typical Hollywood romantic comedy is not just the two women that fall in love, but that all the characters are over 65 years old.

Portraying any type of sexuality among older people can be risky. Age and sexuality is easily exploited for its comedic juxtaposition with reproductive youth along the lines of dirty old man Benny Hill chasing a 20-year-old woman around a tree. Or it can come off as prudishly unappealing such as Jack Nicholson’s character reacting to seeing Diane Keaton’s character naked in Something’s Gotta Give.

By exploring sexuality in later life in a way that is both dignified, humorous, and sexy, director Hamano chooses to take a more sophisticated route in Lily Festival, which has played at many international lesbian and gay film festivals and won awards at the Philadelphia Gay & Lesbian Film Fest, Turin (Italy) International Women’s Film Festival, and Mix Brasil. Lilies, mature and overtly sexual compared to the famous cherry blossom, are symbolic of desire among the women of Mariko Apartments. Each woman takes her own action to enjoy this renewed sexual interest be it through crotch grabbing, caring for the sick man, or cleavage-heaving flirtation. The love scene between 75 year old Mr. Miyoshi and 73 year old Mrs. Miyano (one of the best I’ve seen recently) is gorgeous and sensuous without being overly explicit, showing off Hamano’s years of work in Japan’s ‘pink-eiga’ or softcore porn industry.

Hamano broke into the Japanese film industry by working in pornography studios in the late sixties because she couldn’t get hired on traditional film sets since she was a woman. She is now one of the most respected filmmakers of the ‘pink-eiga’ genre. Her first independent film, In Search of a Lost Writer: Wandering in the Seventh World (Dai-nana kankai hoko: Ozaki Midori o sagashite), was produced in 1998 with the assistance of grassroots donations from over 12,000 women from all over Japan. In an interview with Haneko Inoue of DawnCenter, Osaka, Ms. Hamano states her unique ability to translate Yurisai (Lily Festival) to the big screen: “On reading the original, I was convinced that it is only I that can picture this, because I have long been describing women’s sexuality...I have been filming works in which women experience love-making as their own choice.”

And the reason for Mrs. Yokota to decide to seduce and have a sexual relationship with Mrs. Miyano is a surprise that seems to come out of the blue. I could understand Mrs. Miyano’s motivation since the film had already established her openness to being at least emotionally intimate with another woman, but Mrs. Yokota seems to have only discovered an attraction for women through her affair with Mr. Miyoshi.

The humor and subject matter of this film more than make up for these small complaints, making this a worthwhile film to seek out--and the theory the film postulates on why partners cheat is not to be missed.

Lily Festival is part of