Sion Sono’s LOVE EXPOSURE.  Four Hours Of Up-Skirt Photography And Apparently Pretty Damn Good.

Reader Comments

1. Papigiulio 11/29/2008 @ 8:43pm

   Holy crap! 4 hours? But what a ride, trailer looks very good, and im not just talking about the upskirt shots and the 2 girls making out hehe.

2. Wickster 11/30/2008 @ 12:21am

   I thought that trailer was brilliant. I could watch that trailer for four hours. lol.

3. Marc 11/30/2008 @ 2:30am

   This movie rocks out with its cock out…literally. I’m the one who used the M-word and I stand by it - this thing barely sags throughout its entire running time. It also doesn’t need the short intermission Filmex gave it (it’s not built into the film itself). This is the movie that’ll break Sono onto the international scene as more than just a cult film director - if mainstream audiences can look past the panties and the penises!

4. aco 11/30/2008 @ 4:21am

   4 hours… That something…Strange how Sion Sono didn’t release the movie in two part…  But maybe that wouldn’t had made any sense… Love to see this one…

5. Pusheye 11/30/2008 @ 10:42am

   I love the black Female Convict Scorpion outfit on one of the girls.  And the camera on the retractable cord!  Man, this looks like it’ll be easy to watch for four hours.  Can’t wait for this.

6. Simon Abrams 11/30/2008 @ 10:51am

   Can’t wait; though really, really liked SUICIDE CLUB, enjoyed EXTE, have a copy of NORIKO’S DINNER TABLE lying around and liked what I saw of INTO A DREAM (alas, the screener conked out at its last 15 minutes….leaving me oh so alone). If this is anywhere as good as Marc claims, I will be in heaven.

7. ChevalierAguila 12/01/2008 @ 12:48am

   Suicide Club is one of the worst films i have seen in a long time, it was dumb and juvenile in the worst way possible. This sounds like it’s spiritual sequel.

8. indiemaker0583 12/01/2008 @ 7:19am

   This may be a cult hit, but 4 hours? That’s a lot of I’m not sure how well it’s going to play on the festival market, it’s nearly impossible to program a four hour film into an already crowded schedule.

9. Ichi-The-Killer 12/02/2008 @ 5:20am

   CRAZY!!!!!!

10. Metrogenic 12/02/2008 @ 10:46am

    ChevalierAguila, you’re free to your opinion, but I highly disagree. First of all, Noriko’s Dinner Table was the spiritual (and to a degree, actual) sequel to Suicide Circle. This sounds a little more out there, but I can of course see similarities (cults have been a theme throughout many of Sono’s movies). What Sono does well is deconstructing identity (see SC, NDT, Strange Circus). I’m not sure if you caught on to that in Suicide Circle, but maybe you did and just didn’t find it profound. I took something out of it, and even though it got a bit avant-garde for my tastes at times (bowling alley scene, for example), I thought it was a solid flick. Noriko’s Dinner Table was a little more consistent in its message, but a little slower as well. For me, its impact was even greater than SC’s. I can’t imagine this film having the emotional impact of NDT, but then again, after reading about grown men in the audience sobbing, who knows. I think Sion Sono is one of the most unique and capable directors in Japan today. I’m not sure how this is going to break him into the mainstream, but I’m more than ready for another journey into his mind.

11. ChevalierAguila 12/02/2008 @ 2:36pm

    Haven’t seen Noriko, and i seriously can’t see myself watching another film from this guy after Suicide Club. Such a serious issue like suicide in Japan deserves a better movie. SC just can’t make up his mind between being a camp cheesy-fest or being an obscure simbolic puzzle. I guess it’s trying to be both, and yet, it fails to do anything right. So, people kill themselves because of some crappy pop song? I guess i’m missing the whole “message” of isolation and disconnection between people and what not, but i seriously doubt that the movie has any other message beyond: “suicide is senseless, so let’s make a movie that makes no sense!”

12. Metrogenic 12/02/2008 @ 4:10pm

    Spoilers of Suicide Circle ahead.

    I’ll agree that sometimes Sono tends to go the direction of “cheese” (I previously mentioned the scene where the Bat gets taken hostage by the punks, and I could do without that entirely), but overall, I don’t think the film had a problem with its identity. It rarely descended to camp levels, and despite what you said, makes complete sense, at least in the context of the movie. I’m not sure where you’re from, and I prefer not to make assumptions, but people often approach approach the film from a western view. From a Japanese standpoint, youth holds much more importance (or at least a different kind of importance) than it does in the US. The group Dessart still had its innocence. They were part of the movement that was trying to shape the future of Japan by ridding itself of people who weren’t living for the right reasons, hence the question, “Are you connected to yourself?” You might be connected by love or otherwise to others, but if you have lost feeling for yourself, then why continue living? Dessart isn’t directly responsible for the killings. They are only making people ask the question of themselves why they are still alive.

    I also believe that the Sono and his film don’t are not pushing the idea that suicide is senseless. He gives people very valid reasons to end their lives, and asks a serious question of the audience: why are we here? If we’re depressed, if we no longer have that connection with ourselves, what IS the point of living? To end life simply makes more sense.

    In Japan, suicide simply does not have the same taboo that it has in the West, and is often thought of as a valid means to an end—literally. This dates far back to the samurai practice of seppuku, ending one’s own life, which was often due to shame, and could usually only be done by permission. In such a way, suicide is glamorized in Japanese culture, much in the same way as drugs are in ours.

    I’m not trying to be argumentative, but I do hope that I have at least made some of Suicide Circle make more sense in your eyes. I know that you are probably put off from watching another movie by Sono, but I recommend giving Noriko’s Dinner Table a chance. It’s a lot slower and more introspective, which doesn’t sound like it’s what you’re looking for, but it definitely answers some of your questions (and perceived flaws) of the first movie. Unlike trash like Ringu 0, it’s nice in this case to have a little more explanation behind the events.

13. ChevalierAguila 12/03/2008 @ 2:24am

    “He gives people very valid reasons to end their lives”

    What? No, a bunch of people starts to kill themselves in the movie because they listen to a cheesy pop song. I see no “message” there, just a sub-plot device more proper of a crappy horror movie.

    I guess the movie does know what it’s doing, but again, it just happen to make things bad in every way possible. This is hardly a matter of east or west views, it’s a matter of narrative plain and simple. We get a bunch of one dimensional characters with no background, motivation or anything: from the annoying kids (the one always scratching his voice, the hacker girl, the silly visual kei band) to a bunch of clueless cops playing detective in a case that was written for a bad episode of the twilight zone. Mix all this stuff together, with plenty of cheap gory moments, and you get this mess.

    Heck, even a flawed movie like Kairo from Kiyoshi Kurosawa at least was trying to deal with the subject. In SC the issue of suicide is just an excuse for cheap explotation and random stuff that Sono thinks it’s “clever” or something.

    But hey, nothing against those who liked the film :O

14. Metrogenic 12/03/2008 @ 8:24am

    I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. To me, the reasons they were ending their lives were clear. The song wasn’t driving people to kill themselves, and the group was just a front for the suicide circle cult. The people who were interested enough in the group (which itself was a statement on pop culture in Japan and its inherent emptiness) found the secret meaning, which led them to find the cult, and be asked “the question,” which was what drove them to killing themselves, not the song. Yes, all the group’s songs had to do with suicide too (“I need a place where my piece fits forever; I think I’ll say goodbye”), but they were not directly responsible for anyone’s death.

15. Simon Abrams 12/03/2008 @ 8:56am

    SPOILERS
    Yeah, I’m with Metrogenic on this one. It wasn’t the song that killed them but rather their deep-seated unhappiness. The fact that the cult that operated out of the bowling alley weren’t the real killers spoke to the idea that there was no easily defined or understandable single reason (like your song as killer theory) for these teens to have killed themselves. The song was really, to my understanding, just a signal that gathered them all together. They succumbed to a weird hypnotic suggestion before that but what led them to that group that made them believe that suicide was the answer is intentionally left a mystery.

16. ChevalierAguila 12/04/2008 @ 2:04am

    So, the song wasn’t the one killing people, even if the movie clearly shows that after listening to the song a bunch of people killed themselves? Heck, even Ryo Ishibashi’s family kills themselves after some exposition to the song. I don’t rememeber the whole movie, but i don’t think there’s a lot to explain here, the film is quite direct with it’s intentions. It’s not bad because of being “hard to get” or something of the like, it’s ideas and the way it presents them is what makes this such an awful movie. It fails as both a satire and as a social commentary. The only thing most people will remember from the movie is all the cheap gore. Only the fans are digging their brains with theories for this and that.

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