Guilty of Romance Released 30 September 2011 Director Sion Sono Starring Megumi Kagurazaka, Makoto Togashi, Miki Mizuno Writer(s) Sion Sono Producer(s) Yoshinori Chiba, Nobuhiro Iizuka Origin Japan Running Time 112 minutes Genre Drama Rating 18

23

Not Guilty by reason of insanity.

There’s been a murder in the ‘love hotel’ area of Tokyo. The body of a woman has been dismembered and reorganised to look like two different women. Police detective Kazuko Yoshida (Miki Mizuno) is called in to investigate and in a series of flashbacks we see how the horrific events came to pass.

Izumi (Megumi Kagurazaka) is a pretty housewife trapped in a life of quiet suburban desperation. She’s married to a novelist who’s caring but distant and her life seems to revolve around her ritualised domestic chores. Eager to get out of the house during the day she initially takes a part-time job at a supermarket before being talked into doing a photo-shoot. The “photo-shoot” turns into a soft porn movie but though she’s initially shy and uncomfortable with the experience, it awakens Izumi’s sexuality.

Izumi begins taking more risks, having random one-night stands and leaving the house dressed provocatively. It leads to an unpleasant encounter with a creepy pimp in a bowler hat. After this encounter she’s rescued by a street hooker Mitsuko Ozawa (Makoto Togashi). Mitsuko is only a street hooker by night though, she’s a respectable poetry lecturer by day. Mitsuko tells Izumi that women should always demand money for sleeping with men. Izumi is initially shocked by this but falls under Mitsoko’s spell and becomes a prostitute as well.

This is the third film in director Sion Sono’s self-styled “Trilogy of Hate” after Love Exposure and Cold Fish. He’s a part of the “extreme” cinema movement which is popular in Korea, Japan and Hong Kong. So there’s plenty of sex, graphic violence, sex, hysterical screaming, sex, humiliation, sex, nervous breakdowns and what was that last thing……oh yes, sex! It’s obviously a film that sets out to shock but the whole thing is so over-wrought it quickly becomes quite tiresome.

The performances and are all completely over the top and the characters nearly all totally unsympathetic. Sono is obviously trying to make a point about female empowerment and dark sexual desires but after nearly two hours you’d still be struggling to know what that point is.

It does have its moments in particular Mitsuko’s elderly mother who pours vile abuse on her daughter in a hilariously sweet-mannered way. These moments are two few though and by the end, you really just want this deeply unpleasant film to finish.

- Jim O’Connor