Guilty of Romance

A film set in Tokyo. The narrative opens at a murder scene. A woman detective arrives; the scene is strange and arranged. Then we go back. Izumi is the wife of a well-known writer. The house is perfectly ordered; the slippers are aligned, the meal is ready on time and there is almost no conversation with her husband. She is at home all day. One day she takes a promotion job at a supermarket. Then another offer comes, and step by step she enters a different life. On that road she meets a university lecturer. Mitsuko tells her something about words: a word with nothing behind it is empty. The relationship between the two is at the centre of the film. What the narrative is interested in is not desire but role: Izumi at home and Izumi in the street both run like a text written by someone else, and she is not herself in either. It takes off from a real case; a murder in Tokyo at the end of the 1990s and the double life of the victim were discussed in the press for a long time. Megumi Kagurazaka plays Izumi, Makoto Togashi the detective and Miki Mizuno plays Mitsuko. Sion Sono directed. The film is counted as the last part of his trilogy about family and hate. Versions of different lengths exist. Who it is for: anyone who likes the extreme end of Japanese cinema and narratives that unsettle. Who it is not for: almost everyone; the film is very explicit about sex and violence, and bleak to the end.