Itâs pretty much impossible to deny the goofy allure of R100. A boring furniture salesman joins an S&M club whose terms are ridiculous: At any momentâat home, at work, walking down the streetâhe could be attacked by dominatrices, and he canât leave the club until his yearlong membership is up.
Dominatrix sneak-attacks are surprisingly entertaining, it turns out, and R100 appreciates the slapstick appeal of a guy being repeatedly kicked in the face with a stiletto-heeled boot. Just as the film teeters into an action-movie parody, though, R100 starts to suffer from serious bloat.
The protagonistâs love of Beethovenâs âOde to Joyâ feels obvious. A series of postmodern jokes about the film being a film come from (and go) absolutely nowhereâdirector Hitoshi Matsumoto canât seem to decide if R100 is tonally closer to a Japanese John Waters movie or more of a riff on Quentin Dupieuxâs Rubber.
And the monotony of some scenes, where certain actionsâgrenade explosions, a dominatrix spitting on a submissive man, another dominatrix leaping angrily into a poolâare repeated over and over, quickly transition from amusing to annoying.