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Love Exposure
Sion Sono is unlike any other Japanese
filmmaker of the present age. From his 2001 breakthrough Suicide
Club, a dark and utterly beguiling exploration of youth suicide in
Japan, to 2005’s near-flawless work of Grand Guignol grotesque
Strange Circus, Sono has established himself as an auteur of
unrivalled scope.
His central tenets are usually quite dark,
revolving around themes of guilt, forbidden lust, incest, gender
confusion and religion, and in this regard Love Exposure is no
exception.
The film stars the excellent pop
star-turned-actor Takahiro Nishijima as Yu Honda, a teen haunted by the
death of his mother and his subsequent search for a Virgin Mary-like
substitute. Yu’s father deals with the death by turning to religion,
eventually becoming a priest and enthralling his congregation with his
joyous, inspiring sermons. As time goes on Yu’s father becomes
increasingly obsessed with the notion of sin, and Yu finds himself going
out of his way to commit sinful acts he can subsequently confess, this
being the only form of father/son bonding the demented patriarch shows
any form of interest in.
Though it begins as an exercise which he
can later bring up during confession, Yu shows a surprising aptitude for
one very particular, very illegal vocation – taking illicit photographs
of women’s underwear. He quickly forms a gang of like-minded perverts,
who stealthily practise their craft on hundreds of unsuspecting women
each week.
One day, having lost a bet as to who’d
taken that week’s most beguiling panty shot, Yu is forced to dress in
drag as he accompanies his friends down the street. There they happen
upon Yoko, an angry, man-hating schoolgirl who is being accosted by a
group of hoodlums. Unfortunately for the troupe Yoko’s hobby is finding
groups of males and beating them up, a fact which the gang soon
discovers. Yu and his cronies join in the fracas, and Yoko quickly
falls in love with Yu’s alter-ego ‘Miss Scorpion.’ Complicating matters
is the fact that Yoko’s mother and Yu’s father are dating, and as the
tangled affair plays out the results are as startling, original, funny
and perverse as one would expect from a filmmaker who began his career
as an avant-garde poet and who once made a film about a serial killer
looking for an affordably-priced room.
Despite its four-hour runtime Love
Exposure never drags, and its cast of characters are all so likable
in their idiosyncrasies that their bouts of bizarre and self-damaging
behaviour seem entirely plausible within the context of the whole. The
film has been touted by some critics as Sono’s masterpiece; for my money
that distinction still rests with Strange Circus. It is
certainly an accessible, vibrant and vital outing for the filmmaker, and
one that highly recommended for fans of Japanese film or the avant-garde
in general.
The feature appears to have been shot on
digital in order to minimise costs, and so looks necessarily less filmic
(or cinematic) than some of Sono’s previous efforts, but the clarity of
the picture is excellent throughout and the colours are sharp and
clearly delineated. The Japanese 2.0 Dolby Digital Audio is also
perfectly respectable, and the subtitles are concise and error-free.
The Region 2 release of the film included
an hour-long Making Of documentary which featured behind the scenes
footage and interviews with Sono and his cast; disappointingly, this
hasn’t been included in the Madman two-disc set, and all that’s on offer
in the way of bonus features is a theatrical trailer. As far as the
film itself goes however, it’s one of the most unconventional and
engaging love stories of recent memory. |
