I recently watched the movie "Love Exposure" by Japanese director Sonoko Wen.
The film is 237 minutes long, nearly 4 hours, and it is two o'clock in the middle of the night after watching it.
But it doesn't feel verbose, on the contrary, it is very enjoyable.
The film mixes all kinds of sensually stimulating scenes: voyeurism, imprisonment, cross-dressing, cult, lesbian, bloodbath... Accompanied by the passionate tone of "Bolero", watching the sparks of desire fly on the screen, just like It's watching a hormonal dance.
So from the perspective of perception, this is first of all a very "eye-catching" movie, and the physiological pleasure it arouses is very direct.
So what is the film about?
In a nutshell, this is a story of a group of perverts falling in love and killing each other.
We see the main characters in the film, everyone has a strong "need for love", but, under the manipulation of some abnormal psychology, the way they choose love has become extreme and absurd.
First of all, what we see is the love of a father and son.
Because of the death of his wife, Tetsu Kakuda, his father, hid in the church and became a priest. He tried to suppress the existence of love by abstinence, thereby dispelling the pain of his lover's death.
And Yu-kun listened to his father's teachings in order to meet his father. He became a peeping teenager, and he enjoyed secretly photographing beautiful women's skirts all day long, because only in this way could he have the opportunity to repent to his godfather and feel his father's love again.
The father and son, in this abnormal way, filled the gap of their love.
Next, we see three extremes of male-female love.
The first one comes from his father, Zhe.
What surprised him was that the consequence of choosing abstinence was a more violent rebound of desire.
As a result, the wild young woman Xun appeared and tempted him in every possible way, so that Zhe's psychological defense line completely collapsed, and he fell into an uncontrollable infatuation with Xun.
Their love is an instinctive love based on "sexual temptation".
The second kind of love is the love between Yukun and Yoko.
Yoko was raped by her animal father when she was a girl. The collapse of her father's image made her hate all the men in the world.
Therefore, when Yujun, a man disguised as a woman, appeared and succeeded in saving the beauty as a hero, Yoko fell in love with the female image of Yujun in disguise - Zuo Suli.
What's more, Youjun also fell in love with the cold girl in front of her, because she resembled the goddess in his heart - the Virgin Mary.
However, the love between them is a kind of "misplaced" love.
Because the other person in their eyes is not the other person's true face, but only the phantom projected by themselves.
The third kind of love is Gu Chi's love for Youjun.
Guchi is a saint of the cult "Zero Church".
She was attracted by Yujun's temperament and decided to take everything around him to satisfy her exclusive possessiveness.
So, under her manipulation, the people around Youjun, "Father, Xun, Yoko", were all brainwashed and joined the cult.
In Yoko's heart, Yujun was also portrayed as a pervert with wicked hearts.
Gu Chi's love for Youjun is a love that attempts to possess crazy.
In this way, in the contest of these "distorted loves", this group of "perverts" pulled each other, tortured each other, and explored the truth of love little by little: what exactly is love worthy of affirmation? What does the love I want look like?
This is the theme of this film. The exposure of love, the answer is: how love was discovered.
The reason for setting up such psychologically distorted characters is actually to use this extreme way to express the fact that "the light of love is obscured by some kind of darkness".
When we see the love of the characters in the film, there is actually some kind of "compensation" or "escape".
Zhe's love for Xun is a kind of release (compensation) after abstinence; Guchi's love for Youjun is a kind of domineering (compensation) born from a bitter and unrequited love; Youjun's love for Yoko, who looks like the Virgin Mary , which comes from a deep yearning for her mother (compensation); and Yoko's love for Yujun's female body, Zuo Suli, is a complete denial (avoidance) of her father's image.
Their love is wrapped in a hidden layer of camouflage, instead of growing out of their own hearts.
Therefore, this deceived love can only bring about the pain of not getting what you want.
So, how is true love exposed?
At the end of the film, Yoko is rescued by Yujun, who is alone with a long knife and blood washes the Church of Zero.
After experiencing all kinds of "love and being loved" experiments, they finally understand that the Virgin Mary is just an illusory statue, and Zuo Suli is just a dream existence. They are not real, but just some kind of obsession. read.
And true love isn't defined by any "pre-set labels", it's all about the person in front of you.
So, in Yoko's eyes, Yoko lost the halo of the Virgin and became Yoko; in Yoko's eyes, Yoko also took off Zuo Suli's black clothes and became Yoko.
They lead each other back to the real world and move towards a brighter world.
And true love is finally revealed at that moment.
In fact, in real life, the love of each of us also has a certain degree of presupposition.
The long-distance relationship failed, so I no longer accepted any attraction from afar; my family was poor, so I was determined to find a rich partner; my former girlfriend was not white enough, so the first condition to find a girlfriend was to have fair skin; His boyfriend is a scumbag, so he no longer believes in true love, and only cares about having fun.
These are hidden shackles that prevent true love from happening.
Then, what "Exposure of Love" teaches us is the premise of regaining true love: forget the haze and traps set for you. Then, look forward to a good, natural occurrence one day.
As Pu Shu sang in the song:
Just let them all go, let the wind go far away, let the ones that come, we will wait here, everything will be fine, there will always be something about the future, please calm down
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