Guilty of Romance

The film has a couple of problems. It's too long for one thing and overuses analogies to enhance the story (the poem is more annoying than insightful, you'll see what I mean). Still, it's weird and unusual in a good way, I liked it.

After watching this movie and reading every review about it that I can find, I'm still not sure what to make about this film. On the surface its very easy to understand: women find their power from sex... meaning they have the power to choose who they sleep with and how that event transpires. So a bored housewife descends into "hell" by choice, by cheating on her husband and eventually becoming a prostitute. This sounds pretty misogynistic, but I know full well that Sono is making the opposite point. Hence I don't know how to get from point a to point b. And every review fails to even attempt to give an understanding of what transpired. Heck, I'm still not totally sure what the murder investigation(s) had to do with the above. This is obviously begging for a repeat viewing, but I'm scared I'll be no closer to an explanation of the layered meaning of this movie. It's both frustrating and amazing. Part of the reason I struggled with the meaning was because of Megumi Kagarazaka... holy shit is she ever beautiful. She's so gorgeous that she's actually a distraction! No lie. I will watch every movie she's ever been in. I can't get enough of her.

Megumi Kagurazaka gives a great performance. Actually, all of the female leads give powerful performances. Crazy movie. Sion Sono continues to impress me as I go through the parts of his filmography I can find. I've said this before, but I really get a big Brian De Palma vibe from Sono's sexual thrillers.

Lacking a balance, the film is saturated with sex scenes and just minor gore. The acting is explosive and disturbing, sordid themes and a mistery that keeps the flow going until the very last moments of the film, although it won't leave much to think about after its end.

Relationships from a peculiarly dark perspective. Worth watch.

perturbant....mais un excellent cinéclub....

The overrated and lame William Friedkin should seriously take notes from these authentic shockfests before his time runs out, because Shion Sono's challenging wild rides are disturbingly bizarre roller-coasters with explosive directorial trademarks and sequences impossible to forget. I said it in <i>Cold Fish</i> (2010) and I'll say it now: overall, Japanese cinema consists in stimula that cause cognitive dissonance, a psychological response that is unpredictable most of the times. This consists in setting a scenario and contrasting it with something seemingly contradictory, such as a beautiful score against a harrowing background, or splitting the entire product into two separate and different parts. The entire "Hate Trilogy" applied such technique with wonderful precision, and throughout, Sono learned how to develop characters and the situations in which they are placed, so that the gruesome paybacks could escalate tension slowly and mercilessly in an easier way. On the other hand, the main differentiation between Sono and wanna-be disturbing directors like Friedkin is that he keeps the whole story engaging and interesting to look at; in this way, the entire second act acquires more meaning, and therefore, more shock value. What is so brilliant about Sono is that: - He adds emotional depth to the story, so you'll need the time to avoid having a heart attack and, once that's done, then you can wrap your head around the final product. - He uses extreme violence as a perfect complement for psychological horror , which is the main aim of his films. Directors fail because their aim is graphic violence. If there's no substance to behold in the background, it becomes meaningless and is degraded to mere forgettable entertainment. My only concern with this mutant baby is that it places the murder story as a secondary plot device to unfold what actually is the descent to hell of a woman's morality. It lacks focus. Instead of splitting the movie into three parts, it was divided into two. I wouldn't have minded a three-hour film, given that he has proven himself to be talented (and crazy) enough to compile a 4-hour collage of pieces of contradictory madness. Still, the film offers enough content to asault the senses and enough substance to reflect on. Based on a real-life murder case, <i>Koi no tsumi</i> is a rare movie to appreciate. 89/100

The only really interesting ideas are taken from Buenel's "Belle de jour", however, this movie has a different style, a typically oriental aesthetic and is more perverse. The main character is not convincing, his psychology is practically non-existent, she seems an empty container. The various chapters of the film are connected between them in an approximate manner and the overall movie is boring. The protagonist's beauty is one of the main reasons to watch this.

One kinky sicko piece.

a VERY NICE WEIRD FILM :) artsy stuff