Fantasia 09 Review: LOVE EXPOSURE

[Our thanks to Lauren Baggett for the following review.]

First off, to answer some of the most common questions about Sion Sono's newest opus. Yes, it's really four hours long with no intermission (we were all advised to take a bathroom break five minutes before the screening started). Yes, it's filled with man-hating schoolgirls, kung-fu panty photography, and enough religious imagery to flood the Vatican twice over. More importantly, yes, it's worth the hype. LOVE EXPOSURE is the film of Sono's career. It's also a love story, and a surprisingly sweet and touching one at that. I caught more than one person in the Fantasia audience sniffling by the end.

It seems nigh impossible to recap the plot without giving everything away or making the sublime sound inane, but I'll cover the beginning. Yu (the ridiculously pretty Takahiro Nishijima) is the goody-goody son of a priest. After a torrid love affair gone bust, dear old Dad starts demanding daily confession of Yu's sins. Trouble is, Yu has nothing to confess; not giving his seat up on the bus to a mother and baby is about as awful as he gets. This isn't enough for his father, and after enough badgering Yu finally snaps. If it's sins that his father wants, it's sins that his father will get. What follows is a series of outrageous scenes where Yu knocks over vending machines, joins a biker gang and learns to fight, beaming angelically and declaring that he's “into sins” all the while. He's eventually taken under the wing of a master of “peek-a-panty”, a strain of voyeurism photography that resembles extremely goofy kung-fu. With cameras. By the time we finally get to the title card (about an hour into the film) Yu, now a peek-a-panty prodigy, is facing down forty-odd gangsters alongside Yoko, a hard luck tattooed schoolgirl. Could Yoko, who prays to God to “forgive these morons” before proceeding to kick their asses, be the divine “Maria” Yu's been waiting for?

Oh, and did I mention that Yu is dressed as Meiko Kaji's character from the FEMALE PRISONER SCORPION films? And that Yoko subsequently falls head over heels for this persona, unaware that there's a boy under the Miss Scorpion get-up? And that both Yoko and Yu are about to become stepsiblings?

The above description is not even close to explaining the full scope of LOVE EXPOSURE. This movie has mistaken identity hijinks, a Machiavellian young cult leader with a thing for Yu, and countless hard-on jokes, not to mention a fair amount of blood, and that's barely scratching the surface of everything Sono has in store for the audience. Such wildly disparate elements thrown together in a single film would spell disaster in the hands of a lesser director. There's nothing to fear, though. Sion Sono's got it all under control, and he conducts the insane proceedings with the deftness of a master. You'll laugh. You'll wince. You'll maybe shed a few tears like some of my fellow audience members. But above all, you'll be blown away by the audacity of Sono's vision, a vision that refuses to be cut down to size.

One last note about the running time: it may be four hours, but it's a smooth, engrossing ride. The third hour does drag slightly, but in hindsight it's a pretty necessary respite from the first two hours and their slam-bang non-stop pace. After all, the audience needs a chance to regroup in time for the crazy finale.

Review by Lauren Baggett