The Trouble at Home starring Mai Shimizu
with English Subtitles
 

It's not everyday we get to show an uncensored JAV title that also is a bona fide drama.  Rarely, if ever even!  They don't come often and fortunately today's update is the first of a trilogy filmed by DREAMROOM we'll be showing over the next few months.

The gist is pretty self-explanatory:  TROUBLE AT HOME.  A divorce, people living in less than favorable conditions, sex of a taboo nature, etc.  Being a brief 50-minute release produced by a company not known for top-notch production values, don't go in expecting something ORGA quality.  Still, DREAMROOM did very well here all things considered.  I'm surprised seeing a trio of movies with an actual plot--with acting, mind you!

It's debatable how these titles did in Japan though going by the bulk of their output, the TROUBLE AT HOME trilogy is more of a fluke.  We believe a foreign audience may in fact enjoy these more than the original Japanese target base and even though MAI SHIMIZU is as far as a well-known name as you can get, she has fine screen presence.  I do wonder what her impetus was for doing JAV and why she did so little, but at the same time elected to star in a title like this.  It's one of life's mysteries, but while her delivery was stilted at times, I still think she did an OK job essentially playing herself--a young Japanese woman in a cruddy situation.

This is a drama title that does a decent job of being one.  I echo some of the original Japanese user reviews that mainly praised the increased production value, but panned the story.  Sure, it's not super believable and MAI's performance in particular while wordy was awfully stiff.  From a foreign perspective, however, it's nice to see everyone's favorite traditional Japanese house set see some more use (it was used in another great drama title starring two lesbian schoolgirls) and finally seeing a JAV that mixes a storyline attempt with mosaic-free sex is a rarity I'd recommend not missing out on viewing.