While some of the runtime could have been trimmed if absolutely required, the movie in its final form doesn’t seem to have many wasted moments. The film’s pacing is swift and able to become more intriguing as the story progresses.

With “Love Exposure” you can’t help to note the film director, Sion Sono, making a Takeshi Miike like quantum leap from indie cult film director (”Suicide Club,” “Strange Circus,” “Hazard”) to a maestro able to take on all comers.

“Love Exposure” is broken down to individual chapters and to summarize the film its easier to understand if broken down into two main parts. The first half (pre “The Miracle”) deals with 17 year old teenage boy Yu Tsunoda (Takahiro Nishijima) and his relationship with his father Tetsu Tsunoda (Atsuro Watabe) – who becomes a Roman Catholic priest. Their relationship becomes fractured after the introduction of a care free woman named Kaori (Makiko Watanabe). Kaori doesn’t beat around the bush in her desire for Catholic Priest Tetsu Tsunoda. It also doesn’t take Tetsu Tsunoda long to succumb to Kaori’s temptation and they quickly fall into a heated relationship. Eventually Tetsu, Kaori, and Yu move in together as family. Unfortunately, Tetsu must hide their relationship from the Church and public at large – which means they have to live in secrecy. This becomes a huge turn off to Kaori and she leaves Tetsu because of this. After Kaori leaves, Tetsu becomes a shell of his former self and falls into deep despair. Tetsu’s disillusionment with himself then becomes projected onto his own son Yu. Yu sensing the growing distance between himself and his father does everything he can to regain his father’s favor. Eventually Yu realizes the only way to get Tetsu’s attention is by committing sins and confessing these sins to his father.

Now a full fledged bad boy, Yu looks for any means to commit sins. He then takes up the odd preoccupation of snapping panty photo’s of unwitting girls walking down the street. He becomes incredibly proficient at snapping these photos and even trains two of his new friends. One day, Yu accepts a bet from his friend on who took the best panty picture. Yu is then blindsided by a near perfect picture taken by his friend. Having to fulfill the bet, Yu now goes into the city dressed in drag and attempts to kiss the first girl he comes across.

Once Yu and his friends enters the city they find a feisty high school aged girl surrounded by a group of thugs. The girl is about to take them all on and Yu jumps in to the fray to help her. After Yu and the girl obliterate their opponents, the girl thanks Yu and reveals her name, which is Yoko. At this moment, Yu receives an erection for the first time in his life and he falls instantly in love with Yoko. For Yoko, she also falls in love, but not with Yu per se. Yoko is in love with the tall women she sees whom Yu calls “Miss Scorpion”.

From here we get the second act of the film known as “The Miracle” which covers Yu and Yoko’s mistaken identity relationship. Yoko is so smitten with “Miss Scorpion” that she becomes convinced she is a lesbian. Meanwhile, Yu is unable to reveal his real identity to Yoko because Yoko has moved into his house as his future step sister! This occurs because Kaori (who left Tetsu earlier in the movie) comes back to Tetsu and brings along Yoko, the daughter of her prior lover.

Things become even more complicated by a stalking woman named Aya Koike who is a member of the cult group “Church Zero”. She has eyes for Yu and devises a plan to get Yu’s entire family to join the Church Zero.


As the scenario unfolds (which just may be the scenario of the decade), Sion Sono embellishes his mind boggling tale with charm, violence, perversity, romance, and questions of faith. Visually, the film isn’t as special with its nondescript HD camera work. The film really shines because of its script and the more than capable performances by all five main actors. Takahiro Nishijima as main protagonist Yu Tsuonda has the looks to become a huge star and he does everything right to become one in “Love Exposure”. Sakura Ando also turns in a head turning performance as the main antagonist in the film. She easily evokes the disparate emotions of hatred and pity from the audience. Lastly, Hikari Mitsushima as the sailor moon like character with karate chops provides the needed edge to balance out Yu’s more good natured personality.

With Sion Sono’s background as indie cult director and his propensity for shock, “Love Exposure” also contains moments of shock value which will appeal to a certain group and put off other groups. The panty snapping vignettes (having a Stanley Kubrick “A Clockwork Orange” like feel with its well laid out choreography aligned to tranquil classical music), the kung fu elements (a nod to all the foreign film goers who soaks up “The Machine Girl” and similar films), and the running erection gag with Yu are all examples of this. With all of these moments I held a sense of ambivalence and opted to take in those moments as bit parts to the larger puzzle of “Love Exposure.” One group of scenes that I did feel could have been entirely stricken out of the film was “Chapter 2″ and its background on Aya Koike’s early life. The sadistic nature in which her father punished Aya almost seemed to invite snickers from the audience with its repeated chants of “give it to me”. Sono’s goal with these scenes were most likely to lay the seeds of Koike’s sad state of affairs in the movie’s second half, but this could have been as easily accomplished with just a few words. This is only a minor quibble as those scenes only takes up a fraction of the movie’s runtime.

Make no doubt it, when watching “Love Exposure” you’ll likely encounter feelings of awe from its all encompassing story. You’ll also find bits and pieces of Sono’s earlier work from “Suicide Club,” “Strange Circus,” and “Hazard” within “Love Exposure” – but there’s also that extremely rare feeling of watching something truly unique unfold in front of yours eyes. With all that said, Sion Sono also lays the simplest of love stories within its epic story that all teens can relate with. To think of it another way, how often will you come across a four hour film that’s fun, fast paced, and beefy enough to satisfy the art house crowd? None that I can recall.