British distributors Third Window Films have officially announced and detailed their upcoming Blu-ray release of Eiji Uchida's film Love and Other Cults (2017), starring Sairi Itô, Kenta Suga, Kaito Yoshimura, Denden, and Tomoko Hayakawa. The release will be available for purchase on March 26.
INTRODUCTION
Love and Other Cults portrays young people having their lives tossed around by adults; dealing with social issues such as child neglect, teenage gangs and the sex industry against a blackly comic background. Written and directed by Eiji Uchida (Greatful Dead, Lowlife Love), the cast includes some "real local delinquents" which created a unique situation in which the shooting took place under the local police's supervision. The film is produced by Third Window Films' Adam Torel, who also produced Uchida's last film Lowlife Love.
The main cast includes the talented Sairi Ito and Kenta Suga, who both started their careers as child actors and shed their "good kid" personas to play dark characters. Other cast members include the in-demand young actor Kaito Yoshimura (100 Yen Love), Sion Sono regulars Ami Tomite (Antiporno) and Denden (Cold Fish), award-winning actors such as Hanae Kan (Nobody Knows) and Katsuya Maigumua (Ken and Kazu) plus veterans such as Leona Hirota (Whispering of the Gods) and Yoshimasa Kondo (Welcome Back Mr Mcdonald).
STORY
Born in a small town in Japan, a young girl named Ai (Sairi Ito) is sent to a cult commune by her religious maniac mother and lives there for seven long years. After the cult is exposed by the police, Ai starts a new stage of life, going to a normal school for the first time, but she can't find her place to fit in there. Ai drops out from the school and society, spending her life living with a rock-bottom delinquent family full of gangsters and call girls. In a strange twist of fate she finds herself back in a new and normal life, living with a middle-class family, but her troubled life continues to follow her into more deep and seedy paths. The only person who understands Ai and her troubles is another cast off from society, Ryota (Kenta Suga), who is in love with her. Ryota lives in a shady world of delinquents, though wants to escape and live a normal life. The two teens' purity gets swallowed up by the urban jungle in a big regional city. A black comedy depicting lives of modern youth and their struggles in a place where there is no way out.