Credit: Dangerous Minds / Phantom Film

Imagine you’re walking into a pitch meeting with a new script that you truly believe is your magnum opus, and you’re immediately hit with the question, “What is it about?”. And all you can think of are the scenes with parkour and upskirt photography in them, and yes, these two activities coincide. But it’s also about the Bible, trans identities, and the human condition. How do you explain all of that and convince someone to pay you to make this movie?

There’s good news for you if you find yourself in this highly specific situation: you don’t have to do anything because Sion Sono has already done it for you. The controversial Japanese auteur has a filmography that is unconventional, bold and strangely versatile. From the incisive sociopolitical commentary about youth disillusionment in Suicide Club to the sprawling deconstruction of the fundamentally illusory nature of cinema in Red Post on Escher Street, Sono’s unique approach to filmmaking never fails to surprise, but Love Exposure will always hold a very special place in my heart.

As someone who has been saved by cinema on more occasions than I care to remember, I truly believe that the right film finds you when you really need it, and that’s exactly what Love Exposure was for me. Although it came out in 2008, fully armed with the visual language that defined the era, I encountered Sono’s four-hour masterpiece years later during a severe existential crisis, and it was the closest thing to a divine intervention that I have experienced: in the form of a Biblical epic that has crossdressing, queer love, and a delightfully warped interpretation of puritan morality.

Ostentatiously staged as a coming-of-age drama following Takahiro Nishijima as Yū, Love Exposure follows the bizarre plight of a confused boy who is constantly asked to confess his sins by his father (who has found God and become a priest following his wife’s death). Unable to think of any misdeeds worth confessing about, he starts making things up just to appease his Dad, who refuses to believe his fabricated confessions but is also unwilling to accept that human beings, let alone his own son, can exist without committing all of the big no-nos listed in God’s book. So Yū decides to become a capital-S Sinner, just to bring some comfort to his grieving father.

If that’s not a premise that screams capital-C Cinema, I don’t know what to say to you. Love Exposure works on multiple levels, not just because of the batshity crazy script that Sono conjured up, but how he composes the visual portrayal of Yū’s descent into the depths of human depravity, aka his father’s happy place, where God takes care of everyone. He somehow finds himself in a street gang where he receives training in martial arts and parkour, and for what purpose? To take upskirt photographs of women in public, pictures that do nothing at all for Yū. 

An ironic commentary on the normalisation of such acts of sexual harassment in Japan, Sono employs kinetic camera movement, almost like an action flick, to capture these moments of pure insanity, and somehow, it all makes sense. Japanese cinema has a long lineage of erotic filmmaking, a notable example being the pinku productions, but never has it been so complex and entertaining, pulling the audience into a freewheeling narrative of personal growth and love, which Yū ultimately finds, but only by crossdressing as a made-up street legend named ‘Miss Scorpion’. “Unfortunately” for him, the incredibly talented Sakura Ando, whose character is a sub-leader of a cult that seamlessly blends into a story like this, decides to gaslight his romantic interest and ruin his entire life, having emerged as a survivor of sexual and psychological torture in her past.

Sono delicately balances all these different moving parts to create a dynamic tapestry of human psychology, defined by degeneracy, while simultaneously built on the foundational mythologies of Christianity. It is violent, delinquent, and revelatory, and it won’t stop coming at you for the entirety of its considerably hefty runtime, but you’ll be left thinking about what the fuck you just witnessed for a long time afterwards. And it all started with parkour and upskirt photography.