The revelation of Nikkatsu's five-film Roman Porno Redux series - three of which have their North American premiere at NYAFF - is that Yukisada Isao, the director of Crying out Love in the Center of the World, was born a generation too late. It's as if the genre has laid dormant for 35 years waiting for his touch. Shinji, an indie soft-porn director and film professor, whose somber and laconic mood are telling of some deep-seated demons, wanders from a failed film shoot to a party hosted by several of his students. He attracts desirable and vulnerable women wherever he goes, toying with them just as a skillful filmmaker manipulates their audience. It builds to a shocking and hilarious crescendo of rampant sexual desire and wild catharsis. The film, patterned on the life of another Japanese film director, not Yukisada himself, is as unexpectedly cerebral and emotionally resonant as it is evocative.