Love Exposure (Shion Sono, 2008)

I’m a fan of long movies. For one, it makes you feel like you’re getting your movie moneys worth. For two, it provides the viewer with a fully engrossing experience. Which is why it’s worthwhile in our age of ‘cool’ media to occasionally devote three to five hours to a picture such as this, or say Lawrence of Arabia, Carlos, Histoire(s) du Cinema, and to watch it in one sitting.¹ Anyway, this is basically a disclaimer to say that I’m predisposed to take a shine to a nearly four hour Japanese romantic comedy (the director’s own description). You should be too though, because this picture is like five movies in one, often all at the same time. An incomplete list of elements and themes this movie includes: Jesus as pop-star, kung-fu, up-skirt photography (panchira), Kung-fu panchira, coming of age, familial trauma, cross-dressing, cults,and castration. If this picture seems—on description—to be merely a crazy grab bag of inchoate ideas. It isn’t. The characters are grounded, despite their rather extreme neuroses, in credible trauma. For all its tangents, break-neck pacing, and whiplash tonal shifts the film ends up being a serious and seriously moving exegesis of Corinthians 13. In the rather desolate landscape that is the contemporary romantic comedy; where love is equated with consumerism, divorced from any moral universe. Where sentimentality is equivalent to romance. Where shoe mad shrews fall for gym rat man-boys. Love Exposure provides hope for the future of this stagnating genre. Simultaneously, it succeeds in my least favorite genre² the cumming-of-age story (I even hated Adventureland, because my heart is two sizes too small). Love Exposure ultimately works so well because, as in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, it ties love not to grand romantic gestures (although the film contains plenty of those) but to selflessness. That to love as an adult is to take responsibility for that love. Not to revel in mutual neuroticism and shared taste in awesome bands, but to overcome selfishness in order to be with another person. Not to possess, but to see face to face. Which is work. The picture’s conclusion, while positive, provides no pat happily ever after. It portrays beginning the work of being together. The protagonists, at the end, see face to face, which makes the final romantic gesture affecting and moral. In conclusion; Stanley Cavell would dig this picture.

¹You need a break to pee, or fix another scotch? Fine, you can have that. But did you ever think that maybe you wouldn’t have to pee so much if you didn’t spend the entire movie guzzling scotch? At least do it at a natural break in the film. Gawd!

²I have prejudices and they are legion.