Closing off the 2013 edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival is a new film by long time Fantasia favourite Sion Sono. Sion Sono is one of the few filmmakers to completely embody the ethos of Fantasia and he has been an almost constant presence at the festival since he won the award for most …
Kimyô na sâkasu (Strange Circus) Written by Shion Sono Directed by Shion Sono Japan, 2005 Twists and turns have been a point of contention for many a cinephile for some time now. There are countless blog posts about how much of a hack M. Night Shyamalan is simply because of his usage of twists in …
In this outrageous action opus from writer/director Sion Sono, an ambitious young film director Hirata (Hiroki Hasegawa) gets caught in the middle of a bloody Yakuza war sparked by the vengeful wife of a powerful crime boss who is sent to prison after massacring several of her husband’s rivals. The plot is so convoluted, your head will spin when trying to piece it all together. In short, it bounces back and forth between Mitsuko (Fumi Nakaido), a former child star and the daughter of the kingpin, and a group of independent, but talented guerrilla filmmakers who call themselves the FUCK Bombers. Mitsuko’s father, one of her biggest fans, wants to satisfy her dream of becoming a movie star before his wife is released from prison. Ten years after the young rebel filmmaker Hirata makes a prayer to the Movie God, his wish is finally answered when The FUCK Bombers are offered a chance of a lifetime to shoot an epic 35mm samurai/yakuza feature film starring Mitsuko. The F*** Bombers convince the Muto and Ikegama clans to settle their differences on camera. The two rival groups of gangsters agree and volunteer to be both the film crew and the extras. The film – and the film within a film’s climax — is a prolonged and elaborate bloodbath in which the men slaughter one another on camera for the benefit of a group of struggling filmmakers.
Fans of transgressive cinema were overjoyed to see Sion Sono’s latest atrocity appear on the London Film Festival schedule. The Japanese malcontent is almost as prolific as his countryman Miike Takashi, both of them delivering bold and challenging freshly wrought movies year in, year out. After satirizing emerging fads and consumerism in Suicide Club and taking a skewed look at teen romance, religion and the Japanese nuclear family in Love Exposure, he injects a further dysfunctional analysis throughout Cold Fish, a serial killer-themed tale on the surface that obscures a lurking lampoon on present notions of masculinity, progeny and the contemporary status of morality in Japanese society.
Acclaimed director Shion Sono may still be fresh off the debut of his Guilty Of Romance, which premiered at Cannes earlier this year, but only four months later, he is back again. This time around, Sono brings an adaption of Minoru Furuya’s psychological thriller manga Himizu, a twisted tale of a middle-school boy’s state of mind and how he deals with stressful situations. The good news is, Sono’s latest most resembles his four hour long countercultural romantic masterpiece, Love Exposure. The bad news is a good portion of the film’s running time is played at an almost unbearable high volume, with most of the cast shouting their dialogue. Needless to say, either bring some ear plugs or sit far away from the loudspeakers.
In Guilty of Romance, Sion Sono’s female protagonist, Izumi, is established as submissive. This quality permeates throughout the film and especially in the early scenes, she is presented as a docile and obedient housewife compliant to all of her husband’s desires. Sion Sono exaggerates and extrapolates on this quality, building his narrative around submission, masochism and sadism and one woman’s descent into depravity.