Review for Love Exposure

Introduction

I’m in uncharted territory here. I’ve got a rough idea of how DVDs work, and what to expect from them, and am usually able to judge their technical qualities. The same isn’t true for Blu-ray yet, as I have only had experience of a relatively few discs. I just don’t know how much high definition video and audio you can put on a disc before the quality begins to be compromised. Sion Sono’s Love Exposure was initially released to DVD by Third Window Films, a four hour epic that had to be split across two discs. That’s understandable, as you start to see compression artefacts dominate when you get past three hours of video on a DVD. To coincide with the release of Himizu, and to make sure their Sion Sono output all gets the HD treatment, Third Window Films is re-releasing Love Exposure, now on Blu-ray, and this time it has all four hours of the film, in 1080p HD, with DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio, packed onto one single Blu-ray. I have no idea of whether it will fit or not, or even if Blu-rays are designed to hold so much information. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever sat down and watched a four hour movie before. Two discs are a boon to people prone to numb-butt-itis, and in the past I’ve split films like Love Exposure and the Lord of the Rings extended editions across consecutive nights. This is the first time I’ve actually scheduled a four hour chunk of time for a film, and I’m worried I might need resuscitating. You may see a little edited cut and paste from my DVD review.

Yu Tsunoda is a teenage boy with a problem. Born to a Christian family, he lost his mother at a young age, and was raised by his father Tetsu who became a priest. It’s when Tetsu began an illicit affair with an unstable parishioner named Kaori Fujiwara that Yu’s world began to spiral out of control. The relationship didn’t last, and Kaori left Tetsu reeling in guilt and self-recrimination. As a response, Tetsu began to demand that his son confess all his sins, and on a daily basis. The previously pious Yu finds himself seeking out more and more sins to commit, as confession seems to be the only way he can connect with his father, and his ultimate sin is to take upskirt panty shots of young girls, with a super kung-fu camera technique. It’s how he first encounters delinquent Aya Koike. Also, after losing a bet to get the ultimate panty shot, it’s how dressed in drag as ‘Miss Scorpion’ that he meets, and falls in love with teenage schoolgirl Yoko Ozawa.


Aya Koike is a girl of many parts, con artist, drug dealer, highly placed in a religious cult, and it all stems from her own pious upbringing as the daughter of a priest, a priest that constantly abused and belittled her, and twisted her mind with his own warped views of purity and reverence, causing her to self-harm and attack others. When she got out of reform school, she had her ultimate revenge on her father, before starting her new life as an up and coming criminal mastermind. When she catches Yu trying to snap a photo of her nether regions, she’s surprised to find someone who is almost as warped by his upbringing as she was by hers. She decides to make use of Yu and his family, and devises a plan...

Yoko Ozawa has also suffered abuse from her father, and seeing him bring home a string of new ‘mothers’ week after week has had an influence on her. The only man she has any appreciation for is Kurt Cobain, every other male is only worthy of derision, and she’s picked up more than a few self-defence moves to teach any unwitting man a lesson. Her chance to escape her miserable life comes when her father brings home the latest mother for her, Kaori Fujiwara. Kaori is just as unstable as before, but she takes a shine to Yoko, and the two develop a strong friendship. So when Kaori inevitably leaves, she takes Yoko along as her daughter. Yoko’s world really changes though, when one day she gets into a fight with a gang of toughs, and is rescued by an elegant woman named Miss Scorpion. Which settles one thing, Yoko must be a lesbian!

It’s when Kaori decides to go back to Yu’s father, and demand that he marry her that these three young lives are set on an explosive collision course.

Picture

Love Exposure gets a 1.85:1 widescreen transfer at 1080p resolution and it’s a stunner. You have to accept that it’s a digitally shot film, and the digital cinematography doesn’t quite match up to what you would expect from modern film and indeed modern high budget digital. Also in low light conditions the image can appear soft, but other than that it’s a splendid transfer, rich with detail, boasting impressive colours, and clear and sharp throughout. You can see the production design, the colour palette, the costumes, all as the director intended, and it makes a world of difference from the DVD. Having said that, the flaws also become apparent, including the wires used to induce erections on cue, and the fact that one of the cameras used in the film had a couple of dead pixels, which becomes apparent in wider shots. Also some of the artwork in the background of Lloyd’s studio becomes a lot more visible, and are worth the 18 rating now in their own right. Four hours of HD video on a disc does have an effect though, and there is a little compression on this disc. You’ll have to pause the image and get up close to the screen to notice it though.

The images in this review aren’t necessarily representative of the final retail release.

Sound

As mentioned, Love Exposure gets a significant audio upgrade for the Blu-ray, a DTS-HD MA 5.1 Japanese Surround track, with optional English subtitles. Love Exposure isn’t the most sound designed movie, but the surround does give greater space to the film than the DVD’s stereo track, and it certainly comes alive when it comes to the film’s action sequences, and the moments of ambience. In fact the LFE really does get a workout here during the fights, and when Sion Sono unleashes his wall of noise during the film’s intense emotional scenes. Also, there isn’t any of the popping that appeared when Himizu’s audio got too intense, although there were scenes where I had to nudge the volume down to protect my neighbours.

Alas there are a couple of glitches here, at 1:11.16 and 2:26.11, little tenth second bursts where oddly enough, moments of audio from elsewhere in the film are inserted. It’s bizarre and inexplicable, and it doesn’t happen on the DVD. Fortunately it’s just these two moments, and as I said it’s only a tenth of second each time. It won’t detract from the film in the slightest. The subtitles are clear, legible, and free of error, and appear to be timed better than those on the DVD.

Extras

The Love Exposure film gets a Blu-ray all to itself. The film is presented with an animated menu screen, where you can turn the subtitles on and off, play the film, or navigate the chapters.

The film’s extras get a DVD all to themselves. The 58-minute long making of documentary is repeated from the original release. This is as far from the usual EPK nonsense as you can get, and the term ‘warts and all’ certainly isn’t amiss here. The cast and the crew are interviewed, as the camera follows director Sono Sion through the breakneck-paced month-long shoot. He’s self-deprecating and honest, when he isn’t exhausted and anxious, and the same can be said of his actors.

You’ll also find the 2 minute long original Japanese trailer.

New to this release are a whole heap of deleted scenes, which when you consider that the original cut of Love Exposure was 6-hours, makes them definitely worthy of interest. We don’t get the full two hours here, as the director explains in The Prince of Toutatsu: Deleted Scenes. This is actually a 28-minute featurette, which offers more footage of panty photography, as well as the speciality video that Yu makes for the porn company in the film. There are also interviews with the director here, as well as the person that Yu Honda was based on, and more deleted scenes.


Sakura Ando: Extra Scenes lasts 9 minutes and offers more background into Aya Koike... Just when you thought that her past wasn’t dark enough!

Zero Church Speech lasts 7 minutes, and offers a masterpiece of cult oratory that just couldn’t remain in the film, but fortunately you get to hear it in all its glory here.

My favourite of all the extras, and for wholly trivial and base reasons are the Hikari Mitsushima: Extended Scenes. Five minutes of footage here is wonderfully hypnotic.

The disc rounds off with 7 Third Window trailers, and a weblink in a folder on the DVD.

Conclusion

I needn’t have worried. Those were the shortest four hours that I can recall, and this time I took all four hours in just the one sitting. Love Exposure zips by like a fleeting moment, and though your posterior may be numbed by the runtime, never once will your gaze stray towards a clock. It’s an absolutely enthralling, fast-paced and gripping story, with fascinating characters and full of twists, turns and delightful surprises. It’s also one of those films that defy simple categorisation, by turns comedy and drama, romance and action, satire and social comment. At heart it is a deceptively simple story, but it has so many layers to it, so much depth that as the end credits rolled, I was sorely tempted to watch it again straight from the beginning.


It’s also charmingly profane, and unashamed of the offence it may cause. It picks its targets and goes after their jugulars, wringing as much satiric comment and comedy from them as possible. Perhaps the most contentious, in the West at any rate, would be the Catholic Church, which as an institution is shown as relatively benign, but some of the practitioners of the faith leave a bit to be desired. Yu’s upbringing was certainly coloured by his faith, with the themes of sin and guilt playing strongly on both his and his father’s minds. Tetsu becomes a priest following the death of Yu’s mother, and then gets into a proscribed relationship with a parishioner. When it ends badly, he becomes obsessed with sin, his own and his son’s. Aya Koike’s father is also a priest, although he is far more abusive and destructive a figure than Tetsu. So much so that he drives Aya to the Zero Church.

The Zero Church is just the next of this film’s targets, a repressive and secretive cult, promising nirvana to its adherents, and a smokescreen for something a whole lot more sinister. You can equate it to any cult you can think of, but in today’s society, it’s hard not to think of the Church of Scientology when you see how the Zero Church is portrayed. Of course there is then the comment on otaku and the apparent formalisation of Japan’s pervert culture. Yu seeks sins to sate his father’s obsession with rooting out perversion, and the one that seems to connect him most strongly with his father is the pursuit of upskirt panty shots. Surreptitious snappers sneakily wield cameras and try and get the best possible photos of women’s underwear. Yu actually goes to panty shot school, to learn the kung-fu ninja skills required to get the best shots without being caught, and by doing so, he becomes the envy of his friends, and begins climbing a social hierarchy that he was unaware even existed.

I could be here for paragraphs more; as I’ve barely touched the pre-credits sequence (I think 60-odd minutes have to be some sort of a record). But there is so much to this film that is really worth discovering for yourself. It’s probably the most unconventional love story that I have ever seen, and I was thrilled with the way it could switch from comedy to drama at the drop of a hat without compromising its characters. In fact the characters are richly drawn and enthralling, seeing them develop and watching as the film unpeels the layers to them is a large part of the film’s charm. Love Exposure will take you on a roller coaster ride of emotions, and I found it to be profoundly entertaining. It must be said though that it probably isn’t for everyone. It deserves its 18 rating, and there will be moments in this film that do offend. And believe me, there are scenes that will have grown men crossing their legs and wincing in sympathy. It’s irreverent, it’s profane, and it has the most appropriate conclusion to a film that I have seen in a long, long time. After four hours of Love Exposure, you will be left wanting more.


If you liked Love Exposure on DVD, you are going to love it on Blu-ray. 4 hours of hi-def audio and video onto one disc does go, and the clarity and impact with which Love Exposure is presented is amazing. It doesn’t quite reach the same levels as Cold Fish and Himizu, although that is probably down to the quality of the source material, but in comparison to the DVD, the quality of the image, the detail, and the depth of the colours makes it feel as if you are watching the film anew. I wouldn’t hesitate to upgrade to this Blu-ray release if you are suitably equipped, as it’s more than worth the money. The added extra features in this release are just the icing on the cake.