Love Exposure

愛のむきだし Sion Sono, (2008),

At the Melbourne International Film Festival last year, two films by director Sion Sono were screened, Cold Fish and Guilty of Romance unfortunately I didn’t get to see either of them, something I now regret. Even now I still haven’t seen them, and as far as I know only Guilty of Romance has seen a DVD release in Australia as yet. But over Easter I watched one of his previous works, Love Exposure from 2008. My only experience with Sono up until then had been Suicide Club, a cult favourite from 2002. After watching the trailer for Love Exposure I decided to give it a shot. And I am still am unsure what it was exactly that I subjected myself to.

 

The film starts of simply enough, teenager Yu grows up in a seemingly ordinary Catholic household, until the death of his mother results in his father Tetsu’s decision to become a priest. Over time, Tetsu urges his son to go to confession. Yu, having never really thought of himself as a sinner, finds that his confessions of not helping an old lady across the street or stomping on ants just aren’t good enough for his father. So, with the best of intentions and only wanting to please his father, Yu falls in with a band of delinquents in order to learn how to really sin, and soon becomes a ninja-like master of upskirt photography, pornography being the one sin no priest can excuse. If this sounds like some kind of twisted sacrilegious attempt at comedy, I can tell you,  that’s exactly what it is. Yu is trained by an old Mr. Miyagi style character in the ways and techniques of upskirting in a particularly hilarious training montage, with Yu cartwheeling and backflipping through the streets, covertly stealing photos of girl’s underwear. The whole Catholic angle is very interesting, it feels like a satirical comment on Christ based religions in Japan, particularly exploring the concept of sin, which plays a huge part in the film. Catholicism isn’t the only thing critiqued though, a cult “Church Zero” is introduced, and its members are just as crazy and even more manipulative. One of its leaders, Aya, sets a complicated and malevolent plan in motion to convert Yu and his family to their church, and this is where the movie starts getting really freaky.

One by one, Sono throws rules out the window, as what first seemed purely comedic film becomes a mind bending psychodrama. The characters’ personalities undergo so many changes and relationships become so complicated that it’s hard to keep track. Yu falls in love with a girl called Yoko (a very impressive and sustained performance by Hikari Mitsushima), who he believes to be the one he has waited so long for, but Yoko falls in love with a woman named Sasori (yes, that Sasori!) who is actually Yu in disguise, while the psychotic Aya continues to infiltrate their family and turn them against Yu. Phew. Most of these particularly confusing plot developments take place in the film’s second half.

Did I mention that this film goes for four hours?

This film tackles so many themes and gets into such bizarre territory that I find it quite hard to talk about, or even form an opinion on. Religion, sin, perversion, love, sexuality, brainwashing... The gang’s all here, and it does get exhausting. I loved the aforementioned reference to Meiko Kaji as Sasori, and also the inclusion of such non Japanese elements like Catholicism were very interesting to see represented, particularly in such a critical/comedic way. The use of Ravel’s Bolero was a cheeky addition to Yu’s upskirting escapades, his perverted pastime becoming a beautiful ballet of sin. Moments of bloody violence and sexuality are peppered throughout, with the characters going from one extreme to the next in a matter of scene changes. Some of the shooting locations are so beautiful, particularly the beach where Yu and Yoko hide from Church Zero in an abandoned van, and inside the eerie, minimalist Church Zero building.

This film is bizarre, funny and freaky. The four hour running time will definitely test, if not completely repel you. It is not a film I loved as a whole, but parts of it I really enjoyed and I couldn’t help admiring its unbridled ambition, as many film festivals also seemed to, it received various prizes for directing and acting. It’s a film I feel like I would be reluctant to recommend, but at the same time, it’s the kind of film I would want people to see so it can be discussed and unpacked. Weeks after I watched it, I’m still puzzled and intrigued by it, but not fully understanding seems a part of its strange appeal. Sion Sono has created an epic vision so jam-packed full of ideas that it’s ridiculous… and I feel I shall have to give myself a long break until I tackle another of his films.