Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Guilty of Romance Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov December 4, 2011

Screened at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, Japanese director Sion Sono's "Koi no tsumi" a.k.a. "Guilty of Romance" (2011) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of British distributors Eureka Entertainment. The supplemental features on the disc include the film's original UK theatrical trailer; new and exclusive interview with actress Megumi Kagurazaka; and a new audio commentary by film critic and festival curator Jasper Sharp. In Japanese, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-B "locked".

Testing

Japanese director Sion Sono’s latest film, Guilty of Romance, is about three disillusioned women whose desire to love and be loved irreversibly damages their lives. The first woman is a housewife who does her best to serve and please her husband, a successful novelist. The second woman is an assistant professor at a prestigious university. The third woman is the elderly mother of the second woman.

The film begins with a gritty sequence in which a mutilated body is discovered in a hotel in a shady district of Tokyo. A young and handsome detective (Miki Mizuno, Bayside Shakedown II) begins an official investigation, which eventually collapses into a series of flashbacks that offer glimpses from the past and present of the three women.

The majority of the film focuses on the first woman, Izumi (Megumi Kagurazaka, Pride, Cold Fish), who fantasizes about making love to her young and successful husband but is routinely treated like a beautiful object unaware of its commercial value. Bored and seriously frustrated by the lack of interest from her busy husband, Izumi takes a part-time job in a supermarket, where eventually a stranger invites her to audition for a fashion photographer. Halfway through the shoot, however, she is forced to take part in a pornographic film, which proves to be a surprisingly liberating experience.

Soon after, Izumi meets Mitsuko (Makoto Togashi, Inugami, Memories of Matsuko), a prostitute at night and an assistant professor during the day, who encourages her to follow her instincts. Eventually, Izumi begins selling her body to strangers, though she decides when and who her clients will be. At home, she continues to be the type of wife her husband expects her to be.

The third woman appears later, after Izumi and Mitsuko’s friendship blossoms. She also leads a double life, though her motives are a lot more complicated than those of Izumi and Mitsuko.

The final film in Sono’s ‘Hate Trilogy’ is something of a contemporary noir picture that morphs into a horror thriller, which asks a variety of important social and moral questions but does not bother answering them. It is not as light-hearted but intense as Love Exposure and not as graphic as Cold Fish but it is just as unapologetic and in selected parts just as subversive.

A self-confessed "perverse fellow", Sono is a director who isn’t afraid to push buttons most directors intentionally ignore. He is also a poet, which is why even the most disturbing sequences in his films look and feel like extracts from beautiful poems.

This literal beauty, however, is lost in Guilty of Romance. Despite the sudden color explosions - the random splashes of pink, for instance, are a nice touch but not easy to link to desire, as obviously intended - the film looks unattractive. It also lacks identity. The wickedness and perverseness in it are neither meaningful nor disturbing enough (for a Sono film).

The detective story the film opens with is also underdeveloped, though its function is quite obvious. The occasional bits from the ongoing investigation that appear throughout the film feel totally random because none of the detailed descriptions they offer add anything substantial to the second story, where the lives of the three women become closely intertwined.

The cast is very good, but Togashi is clearly in a different league. Her character transformations are simply outstanding. The cynic she becomes at night, in particular, is very convincing.

Note: Eureka Entertainment's Blu-ray release of Guilty of Romance contains the preferred by director Sono shorter international version of his film, which runs at approximately 113 minutes. A longer version of the film, running at approximately 144 minutes, was screened at the Cannes Film Festival.

Guilty of Romance Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Sion Sono's Guilty of Romance arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of British distributors Eureka Entertainment.

Detail and clarity are very good, while contrast levels are stable and convincing. The close-ups convey excellent depth and the panoramic daylight scenes boast pleasing fluidity. The color-scheme, however, is very unusual, and I wonder if the black levels are accurate. If they are, then the warm and airy look the film has was obviously intended to compliment the classical soundtrack, which makes the graphic sex scenes and everything else that takes place in the film look quite bizarre. Since I have not seen the film theatrically but the overall color nuances look accurate, I am going to assume that the black levels are also accurate. Lastly, there are no traces of post-production sharpening or denoising. Banding, aliasing, and ringing do not plague the high-definition transfer either. (Note: This is a Region-B "locked" Blu-ray disc. Therefore, you must have a native Region-B or Region-Free PS3 or SA in order to access its content).

Guilty of Romance Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one audio track on this Blu-ray disc: Japanese LPCM 2.0. For the record, Eureka Entertainment have provided optional English subtitles for the main feature.

The loseless track boasts a good range of nuanced dynamics that allow the classical music score to shine, but do not expect it to test the muscles of your audio equipment. The dialog is also crisp, clean, stable, and easy to follow. There are no problematic sync issues, distortions, pops, or audio dropouts to report in this review. The English translation is competent.

Guilty of Romance Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interview - in this new and exclusive interview, Megumi Kagurazaka discusses her transition from modeling to acting, her first encounter and immediate impressions of director Sion Sono, the unique Kafka-esque overtones in the film, the character she plays (Izumi), etc. The interview was recorded in Japan, in June 2011. In Japanese, with optional English subtitles. (38 min, 1080p).

• Trailer - the original UK theatrical trailer for Guilty of Romance. In Japanese, with imposed English subtitles. (2 min, 1080p).

• Commentary - in this new audio commentary, film critic and festival curator Jasper Sharp discusses the similarities (or lack thereof) between the three films is director Sion Sono's 'Hate Trilogy', the tone and structure of the film, the narrative, the Japanese director's past as a poet, etc. In English, not subtitled.

Guilty of Romance Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The third and final film in Sion Sono's 'Hate Trilogy' is something of a contemporary noir picture that slowly morphs into a horror thriller, which asks some important social and moral questions. The film, however, climaxes without having anything meaningful to say, and does not engage the viewer like the other two films in the trilogy, Love Exposure and Cold Fish, do. Nevertheless, the cast is uniformly excellent, with Makoto Togashi a standout as the cynical Mitsuko Ozawa. RECOMMENDED (but see the other two films in the trilogy first).