Sayoko Morohashi (Misa Shimizu) is a beautiful young woman who works as a voice-over artist for TV cartoons. She lives alone in a small flat in either Osaka or Tokyo, without a boyfriend or commitments. One day she notices young Goh Yoshino (Takehiro Murata) and his older gay lover Tochihiko "Tochi" Terazaki (Takeo Nakahara) kissing at the beach. Fascinated, she soon frequents gay bars until she finds the couple once again. The young man is a designer and the older man is married. Goh admits his homosexuality to his hysterical mother, his brother Toichi (Kyozo Nagatsuka), and sister-in-law after a meeting with a young woman they want him to marry. Their immediate response is to talk about something else. When Sayoko learns that Goh's mother Kinoe (Noriko Sengoku) has moved in with him, disrupting the couple's sex life, she offers them the use of her place. For a while things go well. As the two guys go at it upstairs, Sayoko merrily thumbs through art books of paintings by Frida Kahlo. Then Terasaki's wife Yayoi (Toshie Negishi) discovers her husband's gay activities and storms into Sayoko's home. Terasaki is forced to dump Goh, who becomes depressed. In an attempt to cheer him up, she tries to set him up with a hunky former sailor. Instead, the sailor rapes and impregnates Sayoko.
"Okama" is Japanese for a rice pot and a slang insult against gays. "Okoge" is the Japanese word for the discarded crust left at the bottom of a rice pot after cooking. It is used as slang for Japanese girls who like gay men--what gays in the West call a "fag hag" or "fruit fly". The last 30 minutes of the film has many soap opera elements, and one very unbelievable scene of violence which diminish this otherwise excellent movie. Vincent Canby wrote in the New York Times, "Very fine...As melancholy as it is wise and funny." Incidental music was composed by Hiroshi Ariyoshi. Written and directed by Takehiro Nakajima. In Japanese with English subtitles, the English title is "Okoge".
