« L’Empire des sens » is a real erotic film. By saying this, I am not stating the obvious since lately, the adjective « erotic » is used for any exhibition of coarse sexuality, for all that the French call, in their fine language, « filth », for what the well-bred call « ass ». As I was watching this film, I was almost constantly thinking of Mishima and his great book « The Ordeal of the Roses ». Here, we are shown a sexual ordeal. A man, just as Saint Sebastian binded to his tree, is sexually linked to the woman who loves him and who will eventually kill him with her merciless love. I would shamelessly quote about this film the famous definition of Georges Bataille, according to which eroticism is the affirmation of life even unto death. André Pieyre de Mandiargues in « Positif » 181, May 1976