"Sex and Zen” has taken the box office by storm after it opened in packed cinemas across Hong Kong last Thursday, outselling James Cameron’s sci-fi adventure “Avatar” on its opening day and breaking Hong Kong’s one-day record for box office takings, en route to reclaiming its producer’s earliest record for the highest-grossing R-rating movie of all time notched by the 1991 original “Sex And Zen”.
Loosely based on Li Yu’s seventeen century classical Chinese erotic literature, The Carnal Prayer Mat, the movie star Japanese porn actresses Yukiko Suo and Saori Hara and Japanese actor Hiro Hayana as well as Chinese actress Leni Lan Yin and busty Hong Kong porn star Vonnie Lui Hoi Yan, the 27-year-old “Slim Till Dead” and “Love Education” starlet.
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| Saori Hara and Hiro Hayana |
The raunchy film, directed by Hong Kong director Christopher Sun Lap Key, chronicles the story of a young man who, after being introduced to the erotic world of a duke, realises his ex-wife is the love of his life. It features “orgies, swinging and some very graphic sex scenes”.
With a budget of $20 million Hong Kong dollars — about $2.58 million U.S. dollars, no small price for a porno flick — 3D Sex and Zen claims to be the first feature erotic film shot in stereoscopic 3D, reportedly with digital effects done by the group who worked for Tim Burton on The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Other major 3-D sex flicks are now reportedly in the works. Adult entertainment firm Hustler is reportedly working on a three-dimensional porno-spoof of the lithe, blue aliens in "Avatar," while Italian director Tinto Brass plans to film a 3-D version of his classic 1979 erotic film "Caligula," based loosely on the dissolute life of the Roman emperor.
