Ai no mukidashi
2008
Japan
Love Exposure
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When Miss Scorpion looks at Yoko and says: "My name's Miss Scorpion. What's yours?" and Yoko says: "It's Yoko" ... I start bawling. What comes after that is so over the top it would be laughable if it wasn't so earned. The final brush strokes. Nice way to start the new year. A perfectly sewn together fanedit. With subs. The additions change the feeling of the film a bit but I don't know what it would be like to have seen this as a virgin viewing. The Zero Church speech seems so fundamental to the film, yet there's so much other stuff to chew on. It's striking how much longer 4 1/2 hours is than 4 hours when it's your 5th or 6th time watching the film. Beyond the Xtras, I enjoyed the familar. Makiko Watanabe eats roles like this for breakfast. She's a fabulous nut. The dude from Strange Circus, Hiroshi Ôguchi, a mysterious actor who goes almost un-credited in films. I googled him. He's a high profile "scene-maker" in Japan. Plays drums in a couple bands. And the dude from Noriko's Dinner Table. I got a lot of Noriko vibes this viewing. I'll revisit that, soon. I used to rank it above this film. We'll see. -------- Sion is a also a street poet and musician. There is a guerilla-art quality to this film. One gets the impression it's being made up on the spot, while your watching it, yet there isn't the slightest hint of improvisation and the film betrays an intricate construction. Contradictions abound. There's a mature adolescence in heady ideas about original sin and up-skirt, "peek-a-panty", photography. I can't call this a 'weird' film because it's not, even though I smiled through most of it thinking "This can't be serious." I was amazed by the entire cast's chameleon like ability to move convincingly among different levels of sanity. Everyone in the film is so earnestly bizarre. If you like Sono's work you will not be disappointed by this. If you haven't seen anything by him, why not start with a four hour movie? The music is great. Summary: "Based on the life of one of Sono’s friends, LOVE EXPOSURE is all about Yu, the son of a Catholic priest who loses his religion when his mother dies. Obsessed with sin and confession, Dad criticizes the state of his son’s spotless soul, claiming that his confessions are weak and simple and that he must confess real sins. Unable to make anything up, there’s nothing for Yu to do but become a sinner, and so the confused kid learns the ninja-tastic martial art of taking up-skirt photographs. Now a full-fledged pornographer he’s really got something to confess, earning beatings from his shocked dad. But in the middle of his new career, while dressed (as the result of losing a bet) as Sasori, the hero of a series of 70’s women-in-prison movies, Yu meets the love of his life, Yoko (Hikari Mitsushima), who’s in the middle of beating up a bunch of horrible men. Drag-clad Yu jumps into the fray and that’s when things get complicated. A villainess appears in the person of the giggling young schoolgirl, Aya (Sakura Ando) who shows up, stroking her green parakeet the way a Bond villain strokes his white cat, and soon she’s manipulating these two star-crossed lovers in the name of the cult for which she works, the Zero Church." |
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