Couples Therapy

In 2016, Catalan playwright, theater director and actress Ariadna Pastor surprised everybody with her play "Teràpia de Parelles", an irreverent erotic comedy that pushed the boundaries of what can be done in mainstream theater. To say that it was controversial would be an understatement. While many critics celebrated its boldness, many others considered it too lewd. An article in Encore Theatre Magazine summarized both positions: "It is funny, it is sexy and it is very daring. But there is a thin line between transgressive theatre and plain pornography, and this play lies comfortably right on that line".

After its debut in Barcelona in 2016, the play was translated and premiered in several theaters in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Sweden, but other countries in Europe did not allow its performance in general theaters for considering it too pornographic.

It is no mystery that, as soon as the news of the controversy arrived to Japan, Jiyuu contacted Ariadna Pastor to acquire the rights to produce a film based on her play. It was decided that it would be Pastor herself who would write the screenplay adaptation.

The next big step was deciding who would be the perfect director for Jiyuu's first international erotic film. The company's executives were specially satisfied when they were able to convince mythical Italian filmmaker Tinto Brass to accept the job, at 86 years of age. The most emblematic erotic director of the 20th Century and the studio that would dominate the genre in the 21st, working together for the first and last time. That fact alone would have been enough to guarantee this film a place in history.

Couples Therapy was filmed in February 2020 in a spacious apartment in a Modernist building in Barcelona, and counted with a fully European cast of talented dramatic actors who had experience with nudity and sexually charged scenes.