Directed by Shion Sono. Starring Miki Mizuno, Makoto Togashi 18 cert, IFI, Dublin, 112 min
KAZUKO, A TOP-ranking lady cop, is called in to investigate a murder in what the Japanese call “the love hotel district”. The crime scene ain’t pretty. The victim has been cut into pieces and stitched together with parts of a mannequin. Maggots ooze out of the sutures.
Flashbacks reveal a demented reprise of Belle du Jour. Izumi is trapped in a loveless marriage to a famous novelist. The meticulousness with which she makes his tea and places his indoor shoes reveals a dread of incurring his displeasure. She lives as a geisha girl everywhere except the bedroom, where her partner makes for a cold and distant companion.
Izumi’s very traditional and subservient existence is shattered when a talent scout approaches her with an offer of modelling work. The gig is racier than the shy young bride had anticipated, but once she’s coaxed into getting them out for the lads, she rather enjoys her newfound sexuality. A secret career in soft porn beckons, as does the love hotel district.
Here, Izumi quickly falls in with Mitsuko, a professor of literature who works as a hooker by night. Enthralled by Mitsuko’s depraved double life, Izumi becomes an eager student. She embraces her own corruption as a kind of liberty. Graphic acts of sex and violence soon follow.
It's a nasty, visceral viewing experience, but the third part of Shion Sono's Hatetrilogy is too complex to be a straightforward punishment narrative. Whatever transgressions the wayward Izumi chalks up, however far she seems to spiral downwards, her new life is certainly no worse than her old one.
As ever, the film-maker's purpose is an exploration of primal urges and the consequences of repressing them. Misanthropic rather than misogynistic, Guilty of Romanceplays out as a queasily compelling spectacle. The colours are garish, the characters are twisted and the sexual etiquette is most troubling. Picture Wallace Stevens's Gubbinalas a Japanese Pink Movie: "The world is ugly/ And the people are sad".
Those interested would do well not to watch on a full stomach.
