Guilty of Romance 恋の罪

Story

Tokyo, the present day. Police detective Yoshida Kazuko (Mizuno Miki) is summoned to a crime scene in the love-hotel district Maruyama, where two "mixed corpses" are found, half made up of female body parts and half of plastic mannequin parts. On the wall is written in blood the character 城 , which could mean either "castle" or the name "Shiro". Chapter 1: Kikuchi Izumi. About to turn 30, Izumi (Kagurazaka Megumi) is a model housewife married to best-selling novelist Yukio (Tsuda Kanji) but all the romance and excitement is in her husband's books, not their marriage. Bored, Izumi gets a job promoting sausages in a supermarket, where she's approached by Eri (Machida Marie), who runs Eve modelling agency. Her sexual confidence grows and, after being seduced by male model Martin (Kojima Kazuya), Yukio dresses in hot clothes and walks the streets of Shibuya and Maruyama, where she bumps into a street-magician character, Kaoru (Kobayashi Ryuju), and goes to a love hotel with him. Chapter 2: The Castle. Investigating the case with her assistant Kimura (Nikaido Satoshi), Kazuko is told that the two "mixed corpses" derived from the single body of a woman, in her late 20s to late 30s, and the sexual organs had been removed by the killer. Kazuko lives a seemingly happy life with her husband and young daughter Rieko, but has a secret lover who abuses her over the phone. Chapter 3: Ozawa Mitsuko. Mitsuko is a 39-year-old associate professor of literature who by chance one day gets to know Izumi, now consumed with sexual greed. Mitsuko invites Izumi to meet her family - her "husband" Kaoru and her abusive mother (Okata Hisako) who thinks Mitsuko is "degenerate". Meanwhile, Kazuko and Kimura interview prostitutes in the area about the case. Chapter 4: The Enchantress Club. The main characters' libidos are set free and the murderer is revealed. Chapter 5: The End. Wandering Maruyama, Izumi finds herself at the entrance to the Castle in her mind.

Review

The third part of his "hate" trilogy — after Love Exposure 愛のむきだし (2008) and Cold Fish 冷たい熱帯魚 (2010) — and also supposedly inspired by a real case, SONO Sion 園子温's Guilty of Romance 恋の罪 is the weakest of the three films but still rocks when it's on form — which is about half the time. Still showing no signs of losing his bad-boy touch, even at the age of almost 50, Sono interweaves the tales of three "model" women (a housewife, a detective and a teacher), each of whom has a secret sexual life and longings, within the vague framework of a noir-ish murder mystery to show — once again — that hate is really the origin and major constituent of love. The film doesn't have the epic structure of Love Exposure or the naturalistic wackiness of Cold Fish, though it's clearly by the same director. And for audiences not looking for grand moral themes or statements, it's also enjoyable simply as another wild, genre-busting ride through Sono's extreme imagination, where almost anything seriously anti-social can happen.

Sono isn't really interested in police work or the solving of the central murder, and pretty much signals that by having actress MIZUNO Miki 水野美紀 (Bayside Shakedown 踊る大捜査線・ＴＨＥ　ＭＯＶＩＥ (1998), Sasori 蠍子 (2008)), who plays the trenchcoated detective, perform stark naked in the opening scene. For the first half-hour the film holds back its other cards, painting instead a deliciously humorous, rondo-like portrait of a compliant housewife whose libido finally blossoms at the age of 30. The underlying joke here, of course, is that the demure wife — neatly arranging the slippers of her control-freak husband — is played by I-cup bikini model KAGURAZAKA Megumi 神楽坂恵, though it's not long before Sono lets the character (and actress) out of her cage — a move signalled by the growing size of the sausages she promotes in her supermarket day-job.

As usual for a Sono movie, most of the humour comes from socially transgressive behaviour, as the three women develop secret lives to cope with the social restrictions of their public ones. Mizuno's cop, seemingly a model mother outside her work, gets off on being abused over the phone in risky situations, while the literature professor played by TOGASHI Makoto 冨樫真 (Dog Race 犬、走る (1998), Enclosed Pain 閉じる日 (2000)) bucks the conventions of her academic position when outside work. Both Mizuno and Togashi bring a classy edge to their performances that Kagurazaka can't really match (and maybe was never intended to). But it's veteran OKATA Hisako 大方斐紗子 who has one of the most laugh-out-loud scenes as the prof's mother who lets forth a torrent of abuse on her "degenerate" daughter.

With d.p TANIGAWA Sohei 谷川創平 (Noriko's Dinner Table 紀子の食卓 (2005), Love Exposure) back with Sono, handheld-camera credits are as per usual, with often vivid use of colour, and classical music extracts (here, early Baroque, plus Mahler) are frequently used in contrast to the extreme on-screen behaviour. The English title is weaker than the Japanese one, which can mean anything from Love Crime(s) to Love Guilt, in the broad sense of transgressing the boundaries of love.

The version reviewed here is the "extended" one that premiered at Cannes, which is infinitely preferable to the "international" version being sold at markets. The latter is 34 minutes shorter and almost entirely omits Mizuno's detective in order to focus the movie around Kagurazaka's housewife. Though the extended version, like any Sono movie, has stretches where things don't work (especially in Chapter 4), Sono's films require longer running times to breathe. By almost eliminating the top-billed Mizuno, the international version omits the movie's classiest performance, as well as doing away with the triangular structure and lovely incidental moments like the joke under the end credits.