The Secret Life of a Public Housing Wife First Half
Timing and Translation by ZENRA
(Continue to Second Half)


"Nanako is an ordinary mid-thirties housewife living in a Japanese danchi (cheap public housing).  Her husband is not doing well and admittedly, she also has seen better days.  Unemployed for awhile, they are nearing the limit of hiding his inability to work.  Their neighbors are suspecting and it's putting the pressure on their already fraught relationship.  Job interview after interview, rejected.  Destitute, desperate.  Willing to help out in anyway, her friend Yukari, Nanako, helps Nanako land a part-time job helping out at her mama-san Kyoko's pub.  However, the 'pub' is just a front.  In reality, it's a 'happening bar'  and Nanako soon finds herself becoming more than an innocent bystander in the world of spouse swapping.  Little does she know her husband is a regular..."

Where do even begin with this one?  THE SECRET LIFE OF A PUBLIC HOUSING WIFE is an amazingly good JAV drama with a big cast, a great story, and it's UNCENSORED so of course there's never been a sequel.  One and done; an anomaly in the world of mosaic-free JAV.  Endless vanilla replaced with a rich plot.  How did DREAMROOM decide on bankrolling this and why did they only shoot one?  Sadly, answers to that remain a mystery.  All I know is this truly is a one-off; a diamond in the rough of (mostly) vanilla uncensored JAV more often than not with ho-hum production values.

The story, as noted above, is pretty solid.  It's pretty much at the point where it'd give ORGA a run for its money.  We get a surprising amount of actual non-sexual dramatic footage and it works really well.  When you realize that the entire cast are all pretty much no-names who only have appeared in a few uncensored movies (at most), you have to respect the effort put in.  None may have MIKI SUNOHARA's supernal acting chops, but they all made me believe we were peeking into the real secret lives of Japanese housewives gone wrong.  I'm impressed.

This isn't our first update to feature swingers clubs nor the first to have a cuckold/hotwife element, but it may be the first that mixes them together so well.  Beyond that, we get not one, but two lesbian scenes that go well beyond simple breast groping and nipple licking (a major issue sometimes plaguing other JAV movies).  Heck, the second part features an all out lesbian harem for one frantically aroused Nanako.  And yes, all the actual sex is raw.

There is a lot to praise in THE SECRET LIFE OF A PUBLIC HOUSING WIFE and while subtitling it, I felt I was preparing a real classic.  Sadly, by the end, one thing I didn't notice before ended up standing out to me like a sore thumb:  the sex is pretty bad.  While the number of sex scenes leaves little to complain about and yes, the lesbian encounters are above satisfactory, they're all too short.  This is a movie that--dare I say it--suffers from reverse 'scene creep':  too much editing for its own good.  If it ran 180 minutes instead of 120 with most of that extra footage being from the sex, this would be one of the better drama JAVs.  Instead, the sex at times seems an afterthought.  It's as if the crew was so psyched to shoot a drama the actual love-love was added in after.  To add insult to injury, the actress playing Nanako only ever performed in the missionary position.  I'm not sure if that was the director's request or hers, but I'd of preferred the type of variety we see in proper JAV movies.

I'm happy we finally had a chance to show this movie.  It's an example of risk-taking of the highest order.  I'm saddened no more have been shot.  I'm impressed that the no-name group of actresses did such a solid job (especially the one playing the bar mama-san, Kyoko).  There are great things going on here, but also some critical flaws.  It's still worth watching to see drama JAV done without any mosaic with a story that's actually pretty good.