Another View 2011 / Koi no tsumi / Japan 2011
In Guilty of Romance the director doesn’t spare viewers, plunging them headlong into the plot during the first five minutes – Detective Kazuko is called in after the disfigured and dismembered corpse of a young woman is discovered, and she launches an investigation. As with his previous pictures, Sion Sono treats the story as a pretext to delve into the very core of an individual, to his or her most secret and hidden recesses.
In his latest work, Sion Sono, the enfant terrible of Japanese film and one of the most interesting directors of contemporary moviemaking, doesn’t spare viewers, doesn’t prepare them gradually for the story, but rams them headlong into the plot in the first five minutes. When the disfigured and dismembered corpse of a young woman is found in an area of town notorious for prostitutes and bordellos, police investigator Kazuko is called to the scene of the crime, and she launches an investigation. In another plotline we follow the story of young Izumi: although married to a well-known romantic fiction writer, their relationship is detached and routine. Izumi gradually discovers her own sexuality, and suppressed passion completely engulfs her. Despite the fact that Detective Kazuko is married and has a little girl, neither is she immune to the allure of love and romance. As with his previous pictures, Sion Sono treats the story as a pretext to plunge into the very core of an individual, to his or her most secret and hidden recesses. The visuals correspond to the movie’s theme – the screen is ablaze with color.
112 min / Color, HD CAM
Director Sion Sono
/ Screenplay Sion Sono
/ Dir. of Photography Sohei Tanigawa
/ Music Yasuhiro Morinaga
/ Editor Junichi Ito
/ Producer Yoshinori Chiba, Nobuhiro Iizuka
/ Production Nikkatsu, Django-Film
/ Cast Megumi Kagurazaka, Miki Mizuno, Makoto Togashi, Kanji Tsuda, Ryo Iwamatsu, Ryuju Kobayashi, Hisako Ohkata
/ Contact Films Boutique
Sion Sono (b. 1961, Toyokawa, Japan) first made a name for himself at age 17 when he began publishing experimental poetry. He left university in order to shoot 8 mm movies – his first film, the 30-minute I Am Sion Sono!!, was screened in 1985 at the PIA independent film festival. His debut feature came in 1990 with Bicycle Sighs (Jitensha toiki), followed by The Room (Heya, 1992) and Suicide Club (Jisatsu saakuru, 2001). Karlovy Vary audiences have been able to see Noriko’s Dinner Table (Noriko no shokutaku), screened in the main competition at KVIFF in 2005, and Love Exposure (Ai no mukidashi, 2009). Last year Cold Fish (Tsumetai nettaigyo) was shown to rave reviews at festivals in Venice, Toronto, and Pusan. His latest title, Guilty of Romance, screened in the Director’s Fortnight section at this year’s Cannes festival, is the final chapter of his "hate” trilogy.
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