LOVE EXPOSURE (Sion Sono, 2009)
Chris: One thing is definite and that is you’ve probably never seen anything quite like our next film. Again I’m Christopher Misch of Next Projection and this is a mini review of Sion Sono’s four hour Japanese epic melodrama, Love Exposure. This rather complex story centers around Yu, a teenage son of a Catholic priest who is good natured at heart but begins to rebel against his father after forced into confession nearly everyday. In the beginning, his confessions are lies as he makes sins up just to please his father. Soon these lies become truths, as Yu falls in with the wrong crowd. Together this bands of deviants pick fights, steal, and eventually learn the art of the ‘upskirt panty shot’. Yes, that right, I said ‘panty shot’. One day after losing a bet with his friends, he agrees to dress up as a woman and kiss the first girl he sees. It just so happens that the first girl he comes across is a stunningly attractive teenage girl named Yoko who he finds surrounded by a gang of thugs. Seizing the opportunity to impress her he comes to her rescue, still clad in women’s clothing, and together they fight off the gang. At first glace, Yu falls head over heels for Yoko and she with him; the only problem being that she believes she has fallen in love with woman and not a man. Underlying all this is a subplot that follows a member of a religious cult, who knows of Yu’s upskirt photographs and his feelings for Yoko and uses them as apart of her scheme to bring Yu and his family under the cult’s control.
This may sound like the most ridiculous idea for a movie ever, and by all accounts it is ridiculous, but it works. Even at four hours, it works. And I’m sure that even at the film’s original running length of six hours, it would still work. And the reason being Sion Sono’s exceptional script that fuses dramatic and comedic elements together so well while tackling issues of such as religion, perversion, love, and the contemporary Japanese family. Beneath all its eccentricities Love Exposure is essentially a standard melodrama, but that being said it’s also one of the funniest movies I’ve seen all year. It’s just hilarious how Yu and his friends approach this new ‘upskirt’ perversion of there’s as if it were a form of martial arts by taking training courses and including spins, summersaults, and flips into their techniques. Nevertheless, as entertaining and clever as this film is everything would have been for not if the performances didn’t measure up to the quality set forth by the other aspects of the film, but luckily they do. Both Takahiro Nishijima who plays Yu and Hikari Mitsushima who plays Yoko give brave performances; throwing everything they have into their respective roles and sure they are over-the-top at times but given the overall absurd nature of the film, the performances don’t stick out at all and in fact feel just right. Make no mistake about it, this is a special film. “SEE IT“.
Explore posts in the same categories: 2009, Chris, Mini ReviewTags: Love Exposure, Movie Review, Sion Sono
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