Madam Scandal is an example of the phenomenon in Japanese cinema called Pinku Eiga, and in this film's specific case, Roman Porno (since it is distributed by Nikkatsu) which means it must conform to a certain set of specific rules including a quota of sex scenes, the film's length, what type of film is used, and the budget amount. With that being said, this should be kept in mind when approaching this film because there are some things about it that don't really make any sense at all within the context of its story that were obviously added in as to meet the strict criteria for a film of its kind.
There are a number of sex scenes that happen in this film that seem to come out of nowhere and have no bearing on the story at all. There is one scene, in particular, with the character Yoko who, after an out-of-place scene at a male strip club, the next day, she throws herself onto one of the workers at the restaurant she manages. It has no bearing on the story and offers nothing of value to the development of any of the characters and it just ends up coming off as trying to satisfy a quota. That isn't to say all of the sex scenes are useless, however. They did manage to use the main character's sexual ventures to help get the story going, and the scenes involving her are, at the very least, productive to some degree, in moving things forward in the story.
The sex scenes themselves, on the other hand, range from bizarre to annoying, to to terrifying. What makes the sex scenes in this film stand out and makes them bizarre is the use of censorship. What's odd about this censorship is that it isn't really utilized to censor things, but instead, actions. It's something I began to notice around halfway through the film as camera angles and the actors' positions wouldn't move, but once they started doing something the big blurry censor circle would appear. I'm not sure what the point of having these scenes are if they are just going to censor it in such a way. Censorship isn't necessarily bad, but there are some times in this film where I'm left baffled why they would even include a shot in the film if most of the shot is censored anyway. This is compounded by the fact that many of these scenes are quite long, and get longer as the film progresses. Where the scenes get terrifying is where sexual assault is portrayed. It happens in this film on, at least, three different occasions and each one gets more uncomfortable than the last. Viewer be warned, if this is a trigger for you, stay away from this film. It feels too real the way it's portrayed here and it's definitely indicative of this film being a product of its time. It should also be noted that one of these scenes has some incredibly racist overtones to it and it is overtly so.
The story for this film is very slow to get started. The first third of this film feels like it is aimlessly meandering through successive scenes featuring light expository dialogue punctuated by some kind of sex scene. The pacing is all over the place as a result. The film finally starts to pick up around the halfway point as we finally have something resembling character drama to make us care, at all, what's going on. Despite spending so much time establishing characters, I still found the ending to be puzzling. In some way, I guess it's praiseworthy in its potential ambiguity, but I think it is more straightforward than I might be giving it credit for. The ending is alright, though it would be better if it wasn't for the shoehorned-in sex scene within the last five minutes of the film. After the sex scene immediately preceding it feeling like the ending of the film, I guess there had to also be one during the epilogue as well.
Madam Scandal is a film that almost gets to the point of being so bad, it's good. Unfortunately for it, there are too many aspects of it that date it to being a product of its time that finding friends to enjoy it with might be a difficult task given the some of the subject matters portrayed in it so nonchalantly. As with many films of this ilk, I can imagine that skipping it would not result in having much to miss. It isn't a film I'd recommend unless you're curious, and I'd say it's alright to pass it up.
