Film friday but its not friday!!!! LOVE EXPOSURE!!!

Do you ever watch a movie that completely alters your brain chemistry. The you before watching and the you after watching are two separate entities. That happened to me with Love Exposure (2008). It wasn't just a movie watching experience, it was a metamorphosis. I will not live my life as I once had as I have been exposed to this film. My eyes are open and I can see invisible bullets soaring through the air. This review will be spoiler free for the most part because I think everyone should experience this movie. Though, I don't think this movie can be spoiled. I truly believe that even if you told me the plot of this movie, beat for beat, I would still be ill-prepared. Although (as I just mentioned) this task is impossible, I can tell you one thing to prepare you for this movie : it's about love. 

Love is vast and comes in different types and people have various different relationships towards it. That's one of the things that makes the characters in this movie so compelling, the different ways in which they experience love. This is depicted in the most unconventional ways you can think of, for example the main character tries to find the love of his life by taking panty photos of random women and when he gets a boner, he knows he's met THE ONE. Don't let all this talk about love fool you, this movie is not a romance. It is a love movie but not a romance. It explores all sorts of love, from the obvious ones (romantic, sexual) to love between friends and familial love and even religious love. I'd even go so far as to say that this movie is everything but a romance movie. It's a family drama, a raunchy comedy, a crime thriller and some have even classified it as a horror film. 

As you can see, the four hour runtime is necessary and (I feel) it could even be longer. According to my sources, this movie was originally meant to be six hours long. I don't like films that drag on for too long, I love a nice 90 minute film but even so, I would call a six hour cut of this movie "too short". The only spot where I feel this movie really drags is in the beginning but that's only because the movie needs to provide the necessary exposition. 

Speaking of exposition, as someone with a not terrible understanding of storytelling, this movie does it wonderfully. I remember my dad telling me about Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie when I was younger, how those two directors had all these plot points and somehow brought them together by the end. I'm not a fan of either of those two directors but I bring this up to say that the way that plotpoints are juggled and  then brought together is nothing short of masterful in what feels like a climactic 3rd act but then you realize that's only the end of the first act, there are three hours left.

I hate to make this comparison because you'll see just how basic my taste in film is but it's almost like The Wolf of Wallstreet in a sense except Love Exposure has more to say, I feel (I feel like any meaningful aspects of wolf of Wallstreet were better explored in Goodfellas which is fine, i still love Wolf of Wallstreet, I merely made this comparison because of the lengths of two films yet how short they feel). It's long as hell but balls to the wall, constantly topping itself in every leg of the film. 

Without spoilers, I do want to talk about one of my favorite characters (not just in the movie but in general), Aya Koike. She's the antagonist of the movie but I genuinely love every minute that she's on screen. Her actress, Sakura Ando does an amazing job at portraying her. I don't just mean in line delivery but also her movements, she moves in a very odd way, there's a certain fluidity to her and this carries forward to her choreography. As in fight choreography, as in this movie had Yakuza fight scenes. I really love the way she fights, everytime she threw a punch, I recoiled my face because her hits have so much weight to them. 

The rest of the characters also have great choreography as well, like the main character. I never thought I'd say this ever but the way he takes panty shots is just so well choreographed. He has all these fancy moves and for what? To take a photo of a woman's panty! 

The funny thing is though, as crazy and bizarre as this movie gets at points, no matter how much is happening or what is happening, even in the most depraved and uncomfortable scenes, at the end of rhe day... it's about love.