The Stars and Moon Are Holes in the Sky sex scenes with Sakuya, Akari Misaki, and Minamo

The Japanese movie The Stars and Moon Are Holes in the Sky stars Go Ayano as a disillusioned, divorced novelist, who fills his life with fleeting affairs and encounters with prostitutes while pining for his ex-wife.

Yes, this is another of those movies where the protagonist is handsome and successful, but we are expected to feel sorry for him because he can’t seem to get anything out of the empty sex he has with beautiful women. It’s a tough ol’ life.

The film features several sex scenes between Ayano and considerably younger actresses: Sakuya plays a doe-eyed student and Akari Misaki a teenaged prostitute.

Misaki is seen on a sofa being undressed and then having sex on a bed while on her back. Later, she stands naked in front of a folding screen.

Sakuya’s sex scenes are more explicit. She has a great one where she rides the novelist and lets him suck her breasts. In another scene, she gets fucked from behind. There are some lovely shots of her breasts being caressed and sucked.

She does full-frontal nudity in several shots, including lying on her back completely naked on a bed. Somewhat surprisingly, these shots are not censored like they often are in a Japanese movie.

The film also features soon-to-retire porn star Minamo in a nude scene.

The Stars and Moon Are Holes in the Sky is shot in black and white to replicate the look of the 1969 setting and the style of New Wave films from that period.

The film is written and director by Haruhiko Arai, whose earlier career credits feature a lot of sexploitation (pink) movies, and whose recent work is also arguably sexploitation with dressings: see the sexually explicit offerings Kabukicho Love Hotel, which he wrote, and A Spoiling Rain, which he wrote and directed (and also starred Go Ayano and Minamo).

The Stars and Moon Are Holes in the Sky is in a similar mode: it takes itself very seriously and has plenty of dour, moody visuals, but comes into its own when it commits to the erotic scenes.