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GUILTY OF ROMANCE

Guilty Of Romance

Sion Sono

Drama • 2011 • 2h 24m

Reviewed by Beatrice 20. August 2023

It is the story of three women:

Kazuko, a married detective haunted by a lover to whom she is sexually addicted, is investigating the discovery of a dead body composed of human body parts and mannequin parts at the Love Hotel district, a kind of red-light zone where many other girls seem to have disappeared.

Mitzuko is a college teacher with a terribly domineering mother; she is a prostitute at night and constantly risks her life because sex is her reason for living.

Izumi is married to a famous writer, leads an isolated life, is completely devoted to the home and her husband who pays no attention to her either sexually or relationally. The daily routine is punctuated by small and reiterated manic daily gestures that the woman makes for her husband, which capture very well the perverse nature of this couple's life. Although Izumi reproaches herself because she should be satisfied with her husband's "love," she is not satisfied with her life, and the writer pointing out to her that that is not Ibsen's "doll's house," invites her to look for a job. She will meet a woman who will lead her to take pictures and then induce her to make porn films until she opens the way to a new life and a different self-knowledge.

In fact, she will meet Mitzuko who will introduce her to the joys of sex through the risks and dangers of prostitution in places such as the Castle in which the corpse/mannequin from the investigation conducted by Kazuko had been found.

"As long as people think you have a dark side it's okay but then the darkness descends."

"Every word is flesh, the meaning of the word is its body, and when you have sex for money everything becomes clear," Mitzuko argues.

"Men think well of women who fuck for free and badly of those who get paid."

The Kafkaesque Castle is the site of the physical representation of extreme sex and the pursuit of death.

The film makes one think hard about the commodification of the female body in the guise of both sex and chastity. The body can be a symbol of liberation and alienation. Self-knowledge comes through the body. The body of the word is the meaning because the word is flesh.

Grotesque, cruel, merciless. An essay on the inhumanity of life so responsible for the meaning of our bodies/flesh. A fierce, outrageous and compassionate film of human miseries.

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