Another provocation from Suicide Club writer-director Shion Sono, Love Exposure slashes — literally — topics from religion to romance, karate to pornography to the Japanese family. It’s a campy rampage that runs a few minutes shy of four hours, dooming what otherwise would likely be a bright future as a midnight movie.
The movie might pass for satire, if only the filmmaker offered a critique of the subjects he lampoons. But he just piles up topics and themes, more or less at random. Whenever he gets bored, he slices open a major blood vessel.
The first half is often engaging, thanks to its concerns, structure and energy. Sono introduces his main characters, three oddball Tokyo teenagers, and lets each tell his or her story. The narrative loops back on itself, its circular nature emphasized (overemphasized, actually) by repeating motifs from Ravel’s Bolero, Beethoven’s 7th symphony and a J-funk shuffle. Fueled by jump cuts, the rhythm is so breathless that the movie’s title doesn’t even appear in the first hour.
Once Love Exposure switches to linear storytelling, it actually feels more repetitive. Though the tale continues for another two hours, no truly unexpected developments or startling insights arrive.
Essentially, the film is a series of riffs on bad parenting, religion (which has little importance in Japanese daily life) and porn (which is much more conspicuous there). The central character is a rare Japanese Catholic, raised in a tradition that’s much more demanding than his homeland’s brand of Buddhism. (“You mean you believe in God?” one of the characters asks incredulously.)