These dysfunctional, hypersensitive Japanese teens and their quest for erotic and spiritual enlightenment make for a swooning, often riotously funny melodrama charged with a refreshingly perverse undertow.
Love Exposure(愛のむきだし)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Japan · 2009
3h 57m
Director Sion Sono
Starring Takahiro Nishijima, Hikari Mitsushima, Sakura Ando, Makiko Watanabe
Genre Action, Comedy, Drama, Romance
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A teenaged boy begins to take upskirt photos on the streets to get money. When dressed as a woman, he helps a young girl beat a group of thugs and falls in love with her, but she only falls in love with his disguise. A powerful and manipulative cult leader threatens to destroy both teenager’s lives and families.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
If you see only one Sono film, check out this flick; you will have then seen them all.
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
Merging the sacred and the profane, the bloody and the batty, Love Exposure tunnels into serious topics - warped parenting, sexual intolerance and the way religious cults enslave damaged souls - with a hilariously blasphemous shovel.
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.
Los Angeles Times by Mark Olsen
The film's maximalist storytelling, both expansive and precise, snatching specific emotions from its torrid swirl, is best exemplified by the fact that the title card doesn't appear until an hour in.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
Deeply strange and politically incorrect, baffling, and often funny.
Complicated and long but deftly handled adventure/caper/satire that ends up being thoroughly entertaining
The movie’s invigorating discourse on sin, lust and love is propelled by a kind of Dionysian glee which keeps it airborne almost constantly.
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