Hisss (2010) - 2.5/4

I've heard a little about Bollywood, but haven't seen much. Their cinematic form seems to have discarded all notions of consistency in tone and has instead striven to entertain in every possible way simultaneously and often conflictingly. Hisss is a Bollywood film directed by American-as-Apple-Pie Jennifer Lynch. How much of her vision remains is hard to say, but she's disowned the film. How many shots were directed by her is also hard to say. But the resulting film is nevertheless both entertaining and interesting.

"I may have brain cancer, but I can still piss like a horse." The man who utters that line is the film's villain, a psychopathic white guy (Jeff Doucette) who wants to become immortal. The best way to become immortal is to find some cobras mid-coitus, kidnap the male, put him in an aquarium, and randomly administer electric shocks. The female snake then transforms into a hot Indian supermodel (Mallika Sherawat, in this case), a snake goddess, who will find the kidnapper and trade a special diamond for her mate. This diamond can grant immortality.

Of course, it won't really go down like that. Shapeshifting snake deities will just eat you and vomit your semi-digested corpse into the nearest gutter. And that's where Hisss is a horror film. Mallika does come to the city looking for her mate. But the only trail she has is the people who assisted in the kidnapping. Instead of questioning them, she sniffs them out, swallows them, and vomits them up in nasty, slimy balls. For vore fetishists, this is no doubt very exciting stuff.

It also excites the interest of a local detective, however. Despite having little to do with the plot itself, the film is strangely concerned with the detective's personal life. He and his wife have been striving to have children, but she keeps miscarrying. Meanwhile, his mother-in-law--easily the film's finest character--believes he's really a woman, a lonely spinster in need of love. She also thinks the news broadcasts about the snake goddess's victims is a TV series starring her son-in-law.

Apparently Jennifer Lynch conceived Hisss as an absurd love story between the snake goddess and her snake lover. The producers, however, conceived of the film as a snakewoman horror film with a hot babe slinking around naked. The mixture is strangely Shakespearean in the way it appeals to high and low cultures, poetic and entertainment interests at the same time. That's not to say the film is brilliant; the producer interference has probably done a lot more harm than good. The film's finest moments are likely fragments from Lynch's vision: the poetic, fairytale moments when Mallika slithers up a tree or light post totally naked and, in silence, longs for her stolen love--the whole film, in a way, is moving toward the completion of the interrupted coitus. There are also parallels between the snake couple and the detective and his wife that are rather nebulous as the film stands, something to do with love, fertility, and respect for life. Their destinies are bound together. Alas, whatever message Lynch was going for here is tough to decipher.

One of the stranger responses I had to Hisss was to wonder why the snake goddess would work so hard to pursue her snake mate when, in human form, she has her pick of all these human males. Even though she is technically a snake, she's in human form; she could stay in human form and have a human mate. The film seems to deliberately pull these anthropocentric strings. As a man, I found myself almost jealous of the snake: why should he get this hot mate when we humans are such superior males? Perhaps this anthropocentrism as part of what Lynch wanted to explore with this film and why she made efforts to parallel the humans to the snakes. In the film's present form, it's hard to say.

However mangled and inconsistent Hisss may be, it is a fascinating mixture of conscious and subconscious, art and entertainment, poetry and exploitation. Weird, often unintentionally funny, the film is worth at least one viewing for Western horror audiences, to whom snakewomen movies, a subgenre of Indian cinema, are unusual.

The Twilight Saga - 3/4

As a relatively little-read internet reviewer, I question the wisdom of writing about the Twilight series. What can I have to say that hasn't been said? I don't care to wade through all the internet literature on Twilight; I can only hope I, as an impartial outsider, have some fresh insight to contribute. For my part, writing about the films will satisfy a need to express just why, despite not being the target audience, I find these films so fascinating. ("These films," incidentally, refers to Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse.)

The gist of the series is as follows. Bella, a fairly normal albeit melancholic and diffident teen girl in her senior year of highschool, returns to her hometown to live with her father. While fitting in with the normal students, she's drawn to the strangely contemptuous and pallid Edward. Soon they fall in love and she learns he's a vampire. The complication comes from Jacob, a childhood friend with whom she also falls in love and who happens to be a werewolf. Throughout the films Bella learns about both vampire and werewolf society and of the antipathy between them. She realizes she's not being fought over by two attractive young men, but by two whole societies. To choose one is to preclude herself from the other. The indecisive Bella dicks both men around for an inordinately long time and causes both conflicts and truces between the societies as she does so.

What most interests me about the films is Bella's dilemma. I suppose that's what interest teenage girls as well, but for different reasons. I'm fascinated by her dilemma because of what it represents, namely, class conflict. The vampires have extremely white skin, traditional nuclear family structure (despite not being related to one another), high education, elegant clothes, a spotless and modern-design mansion, and impeccable manners. The werewolves, in contrast, all have tanned skin, a loose and shifting family structure (follow the character Leah), trade learning (motorcycle repair), wear nothing but shorts, live in wood cabins, and often roughhouse.

The contrast is between what Nietzsche classed as Apollonian and Dionysian impulses; between cultured life and natural life (i.e. the Noble Savage). Cultured life has always been seen as high class and natural life low class. On the other hand, as in Rousseau, cultured life is seen as phony and natural life truer and purer. These prejudices have been in place as long as human civilization. There are certainly virtues to both 'sides', if indeed it's necessary to have sides. Cultured life can be seen as too secondary, detached from lived experience; too effete in situations that really count. A library science scholar is useless in a survival situation; a mechanic isn't. However, sophistication has attractions: artistic and poetic beauty, deep conversations, romance and comedy.

The sexual implications, however, are at the forefront of Twilight. The sexual implications of the class distinction is, as in Twilight, centered upon the men. Women are supposed to, and often do, want men who are aggressive, muscular, tough, good with their hands, often sweating and getting dirty--"manly" men. On the other hand, they like men who are romantic, poetic, witty, and intellectually stimulating--cultured men. The men who are of the "manly" variety are made to feel inadquate for their lack of refinement; the refined men are made to feel inadequate for not being manly enough, as though culture is feminizing. (The arts are oftened considered 'sissy' stuff by the uncultured.) Hence the depiction so often found in Hollywood of a woman who marries a cultured man then has an affair with a brawny, working-class man. The lower class is seen as good for sexual stimulation, the upper class as good for intellectual stimulation. (It is on this prejudice that the whole of interracial pornography seems to thrive.) Bella's position in the film is in choosing between the two ends of the spectrum women desire: men who can be wild and men who can, as Shakespeare put it, word them.(1) Edward can word her; Jacob can thrill her.

This distinction is represented faithfully in the films. Edward is always seen as having to restrain his passion (his desire for her blood), Jacob is always free to express his passion. Where Edward has graduated from school countless times, as he's perpetually 17, Jacob spends his time roughhousing and cliffdiving with his fellow shirt-allergy sufferers. (McConaughey and Danzig would make good werewolves.) The most revealing scene, presented so chastely for the teens of course, is when Bella is being kept safely on a frosty mountain. While she freezes in the tent, the undead Edward, whose body produces no heat, is unable to keep her warm. Jacob, however, produces more body heat than the average human. So he has to slip into bed with Bella to warm her while Edward sits, observing. That's the distinction in a nutshell: hot/cold in bed, good/bad with words, restrained/unrestrained emotions.

Of course, the distinction is objectionable to men. Cultured men are not incapable of being wild lovers or aggressive fighters; 'uncultured' men are not incapable of being poets or sensitive lovers. What is unfortunate about the Twilight Saga is that it never provides an alternative. Rather than suggest that this dichotomy is unnecessary or an illusion created by over a century filled with penny-dreadful romance novels, soap operas, and pandering movies, Twilight takes us into the mind of a girl who is indeed choosing between the sides and never learns how erroneous that is. A bildungsroman Twilight is not. The progress is not interior; it is merely exterior. She chooses and that is all. To be fair, Edward, at least, does not fit his stereotype; he is able to thrill her in between his sullen, soft-spoken speeches. Also to be fair, Bella herself is choosing between the individuals as individuals, not as archetypes.

While both individuals Bella has to choose from are admirable. It would be difficult for any woman to really find either Edward or Jacob anything less than desirable. Both are very handsome young men; both are very sincere and loyal; both are a teenage girl's dream come true, albeit in different ways. Bella's insistance on keeping both men on a leash while she chooses thus makes her a rather unpleasant character. One might argue that Jacob is a puppy that doesn't give up. Rather, he's a practical man who needs to be given a clear and straight-forward denial, which is not forthcoming from Bella. She prefers to keep him around so she can dangle in front of him like a carrot, leading him to do whatever she wants but giving nothing in return. Edward, on the other hand, she keeps closer, but frequently humiliates when she wants to make sure Jacob doesn't leave her grip and thus throws him a bone. Why either of these genuinely nice young men want anything to do with her is puzzling to me.

But it's just a girl's fantasy. I'm taking a fantasy too seriously. The films are and must be seen as the fantasies of a girl as she daydreams on a rainy day, listening to indie rock on her iPod. The dream is of two implausibly attractive and generous young men fighting for her; of whole cultures fighting to protect her, because she's the fairest princess in the land. Because this is her fantasy, it doesn't matter if she's kind of a bitch. Because this is her fantasy, we can set aside the realism and just enjoy it for what it is. Hopefully girls who fantasize this way will grow up and learn that real people can be so much more than cultured and wildman archetypes.

The events of the series that are not directly concerned with Bella's dual love are caused by it. An evening game with Edward's family attracts the attention of some renegade vampires. The rest of the series deals with the repercussions. Both vampire family and werewolf family strive to protect Bella for the sakes of their smitten members. This results in some conflicts between the families and some temporary truces. Bella's interference with the cold but cease-fire relationship leads to a perhaps more amicable peace. I would like to relate this to the class-conflict issue discussed earlier, but I can't, except as a dream of risible optimism. The point is that a shared love unites classes and cultures. But of course, all people do love and long for the same things and it hasn't worked yet.

Each film manages to include some fantastical fight scenes. These are enjoyable for their kinetic and aggressive qualities. Vampires can take and deliver punches that are just impossible in real life. In other words, the fights are very much descendents of The Matrix's fight scenes. Either you like this sort of fight choreography or you don't. Personally I prefer traditional, Jackie Chan-style fights; but there's undeniably quite a lot of enjoyment to be had in seeing a werewolf tearing a vampire to pieces.

What isn't fun is the constant posing. Before a fight, after a fight, and sometimes randomly, the characters, usually the vampires, will strike book-cover style poses. The artificiaility is cloying. Nobody randomly poses in real life. And I don't remember it being the plight of vampires to randomly strike poses. It's an artifact of the filmmaking, allowing poster-shots mid-film. The results are silly and tedious.

Overall, the series is surprisingly entertaining. They are indeed geared for a female audience, a girl's fantasy. But girls fatasize much as men do. Men fantasize about fighting for girls; girls fantasize about being fought over by men. Our fantasizes couldn't be more compatible. We still have fights, love, sex, suffering, more fights, and more love. So choose a side and dive into the fantasy. I chose Edward, if you must know.

(1) "He words me, girls, he words me." Antony and Cleopatra, 5.2.

Barbe Bleue (2009) - 4/4

Literal

Catherine Breillat's Barbe Bleue occurs on two levels of narrative. On the first level, the present day, a precocious little girl is reading the Bluebeard story to her older, "girlier" sister and delighting in both shocking and frightening her with the details. On the second level is the Bluebeard story itself, a gorgeous and realistic period melodrama about the young bride of a murderous aristocrat. It is told with such detail that it could not possibly be a mere representation of what the little girl--however precocious--is telling her sister. For instance, Bluebeard teaches his bride the Latin names of various fungi and Chinese records of solar eclipses. So we're seeing the legend itself unfold as a real historical event while the little girl reads the original Charles Perrault tale.

Most of the screentime is taken up by the Bluebeard story seen from the point of view of the young bride, Marie-Catherine. We first meet her arriving late for a meeting with Mother Superior, where she's told her father has died and that she and her sister Anne are now too poor to stay at the convent school. Their mother laments that they're even too poor to marry off, having no dowry. For better or worse, the man in the enormous castle nearby, the infamous Bluebeard, whose wives all mysteriously disappear, is now looking for a new wife. He and Marie-Catherine find kindred spirits in one another despite their many differences. They're both highly intelligent loners who find a sort of freedom-to-be with each other. So they marry and he eventually charges her with the key to his secret room, which she must never enter, but which she enters anyway. That's the Bluebeard legend.

Breillat's approach to the fairytale resembles Rossellini's La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV in its attention to detail, realism, and quiet tableaux. There is no musical score, except the occasional piece played by a character. All one hears are the sounds of birds, the wind, characters breathing, eating, and of course speaking. I so enjoyed being left to feel each scene on my own; being free to feel the space, the environment, the presences without distraction. Breillat's camera movements, lighting and long takes increase this feeling. The camera often turns around characters, usually a good 90-degrees, impressing upon me the sense of being-there. These people are not in a frame; they're in a world. When Bluebeard and Marie-Catherine go for a walk, I could feel what it is like for them to walk together, to spend time together, to be where they are as they are.

This brings us to the emotional heart of the film. Bluebeard and Marie-Catherine form a strangely beautiful relationship. Where she is virginal and innocent, somehow untouched by a world of norms and conventions, she has this inner strength. And where Bluebeard is a worldly, rich aristocrat, he has this vulnerability. When they first meet, the corpulent Bluebeard is reclining against a tree, a huge presence; but Marie-Catherine, tiny as she is, stands over him and seems to dominate him in the scene. The biggest close-up in the film occurs at this point, shooting her face from a low angle. She dominates not by anything she says, but merely by spirit, for lack of a better word. When he makes the mistake of putting her bed at the foot of his, like a dog she claims, he says pathetically, "I thought I was doing the right thing." He, however, admires her honesty and she admires his. They seem eager to please one another. They are both intelligent, individualistic people who like their space. These two loners seem to belong together, alone in their tower. Their moments together are so quiet, so intimate. He likes to teach her things; she likes to learn. He likes talking; she likes listening to him. Bluebeard has this incredible, gentle voice that sounds like he's ever speaking a soft 'good night', so it's not a wonder. Their relationship is a tender one, so peaceful that its coming to an end is all the more upsetting.

The girls reading the story also have an interesting relationship. The scenes with them are amusing, even laugh-out-loud funny, as they offer innocent, yet significance-laden commentary on the story. Like when the younger one, Marie-Anne, seems to think married couples become homosexuals. Does she know what that word means? It's not clear. I have no idea how Breillat did it, but it looks as they the conversation between them really happened and wasn't an act at all. It's impossible, but it has that spontanaeity.

Allegorical

The first shot and final shot of the film depict the same thing: a seated woman with a man's decapitated head before her. There are many possible significances. Is it female empowerment? That simplistic notion doesn't seem to give Breillat the credit she deserves. Yet, the film does concern certain socioeconomic issues affecting women historically. Anne reacts fiercely to the suggestion of being sent to a convent for lacking a dowry. Christianity was without a doubt the fiercest oppressor of individuality, especially female individuality. Her father might be dead, but does that mean she must be a living dead? she asks. Anne consequently resents her father for dying. Marie-Catherine is unconcerned and seems convinced she can become rich, but of course the only way she can do this is by marrying a rich man. So she marries Bluebeard, who takes advantage of the socioeconomic system to find new wives. The woman in the first image holds a quill, and certainly female education is the major step toward triumphing over socioeconomic oppression.

On another level, Anne seems resigned to the conditions she finds herself in, though she's not happy about it. Marie-Catherine, on the other hand, pretends these conditions and conventions don't exist. She would rather play with insects beside a pond than dance with the boys at Bluebeard's bride-picking party. She doesn't seem to doubt for a moment that she can become rich if she wants to. It doesn't bother her that Bluebeard isn't a conventionally attractive man. Arbitrary rules, like "Don't go into the secret room," were made to be broken by spirits like Marie-Catherine. As I see it, it is arbitrary rules and conventions that is triumphed over in the first and final images, whatever the cost. It is arbitrariness I regarded with the most horror after seeing Barbe Bleue.

Then there are the two girls reading the story, Marie-Anne and Catherine. Catherine, the elder of the two, is easily frightened by the Bluebeard story, wears pigtails, and thinks of marriage as two people falling in love forever and getting a gold ring. She has a totally conventional mind. She didn't want to enter the attic where the book is kept because it's forbidden. Marie-Anne, however, is adventurous, imagines alternative possibilities in marriage: perhaps the wife becomes an ogress, or perhaps they all turn homosexual. She doesn't care if she gets her dress dirty. She's clearly the more intelligent. Ultimately the universe of the story privileges her and punishes the conventional Catherine, though I won't say how.

Moral

There is a single close-up of Marie-Catherine in Barbe Bleue that without a doubt references Falconetti in Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc. One of the most fascinating historical facts for me seems to have caught the interest of Catherine Breillat as well: the original Bluebeard, Gilles de Rais, was a friend and comrade-in-arms of Joan of Arc. One of the vilest serial killers in history was a companion of one of the most famous virgins. No-one is pure evil. Marie-Catherine seems to find all that's good in Bluebeard and in her innocence controls the ogre. She accepts him. She prefers it when he doesn't dye his beard black. She's both interested and repulsed by his corpulent body. The differences in their bodies are almost a physical representation of the differences within. Marie-Catherine comments at one point that he will "always be too big" for her.

At the same time, Marie-Catherine's comment hints toward a virginal anxiety about the male body. One's mind cannot but be led to the sexual implications of the phrase 'too big.' Marie-Catherine does not want to entertain the notion of the impending marital consummation. In Bluebeard's secret room, she drops the key in blood and it continues bleeding. Her curiosity is rewarded with anxiety and the threat of destruction. Breillat, however, does not punish her curiosity as the traditional story does. This is not even to touch on Marie-Catherine's odd attitudes toward death: she tells her dead father he is more handsome in death than in life. She seems to find more comfort in sterile bodies than virile ones.

When Marie-Catherine first hears about Bluebeard's murders, she wonders how it's possible he's not in prison. The more worldly and cynical Anne comments that a rich man can do what he likes to women: that is justice, not blind at all. Marie-Catherine refuses to accept this verdict. It's possible she plans justice in some fashion. The final image of the film brings to mind Lucas Cranach the Elder's Judith with the Head of Holofernes. Perhaps Marie-Catherine envisioned risking herself to get justice when she watched the beheaded duck flop to dead on the castle grounds. Like Joan of Arc, she is not just a virgin, but a sort of warrior. How manipulative and self-interested she is is not clear. After all, Lucas Cranach's Salome with the Head of John the Baptist is very similar to his Judith. To this end, there is some resemblance to Paul Verhoeven's Flesh+Blood.

There is another interesting point to take away from Barbe Bleue. The little girls in this film are some very fascinating and complex characters. Marie-Catherine, Marie-Anne, and Anne are rich characters whose attitudes can't be easily predicted. It's easy to dismiss children, especially little girls, as being merely cute and not worth taking seriously. But they can have highly-developed inner lives. Given the opportunity they can form meaningful non-sexual relationships with adults of either sex. At the very least we should listen to what they have to say and not impose our decrepit conventional attitudes on them.

Anagogical

There is, finally, the issue of the names. The girls reading Bluebeard are named Marie-Anne and Catherine. The girl who marries Bluebeard is Marie-Catherine and her sister is Anne. The director is named Catherine. This overlap is of course intentional. Despite the misleading distribution of the names, I get the impression Marie-Anne is the surrogate of Catherine Breillat, not Catherine. Like Breillat, Marie-Anne is spinning the story; and like Breillat, her inventive mind delights in subverting expectations. Like Marie-Anne delights in shocking her sister, Breillat takes some pleasure in shocking her audience. The nearly pedophilic marriage is, after all, rather shocking. There are even bigger shocks as the film develops. That's one level.

The next level is that Marie-Anne, the Breillat surrogate, gives herself a surrogate in the character of Marie-Catherine. But she separates her name. She calls Marie-Catherine's sister Anne. And Marie-Anne's own sister is Catherine. As if she's absorbed her sister in herself, wants to take over her sister's position in the family. Marie-Catherine tells Bluebeard at one point that everything in her house was set up for her sister and she had to share it. In some sense, Bluebeard offers a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the younger sister. Incidentally, Breillat has an older sister that she liked to read scary stories to as well.

Most fascinating of all is the incredible discovery-scene, the scene in which Bluebeard's secret office is entered. For this scene, instead of Marie-Catherine we see Marie-Anne exploring the blood-soaked room, repeating to herself, "I am not afraid." So we have at least two levels of wish-fulfillment here. Creative people who read fairytales imagine themselves in the situation, expand it, develop it into a more realistic world where they inhabit and can act out much more complicated responses, avoid the mistakes made by the fairytale heroines. In this scene we have the character reading herself into the story as perhaps Breillat did as a child and when writing the screenplay and as I was doing earlier in the film. It is a way of engaging with fiction, to fantasize about it; and to use those fantasies to deal with our personal issues. It's one of the most original and fascinating explorations of the relationship between fiction and reality I've ever seen in a film. I've only scratched the surface.

"I've only scratched the surface." That's true in general. As I've shown here, Barbe Bleue works on many, many layers. I have only pointed in a few of the most interesting directions and demonstrated a few possible ways to follow these avenues of thought. This film deserves to have a very healthy afterlife in one's mind and in several rewatchings.

Love Exposure (2008) - 4/4

Love Exposure is the cinematic equivalent of post-post-modern novels like Infinite Jest and White Teeth, or the novels of Murakami: big, ambitious, sprawling, yet with an emotional core and focus. To some extent, Love Exposure is even more successful than its literary correlates. It is an epic four hour romantic tragicomedy on the themes of love and perversion told with such a sure hand and masterful pacing that it manages to mostly redeem itself of its shortcomings.

Those shortcomings develop in the first act, within which the influence of post-modern literature is most evident. During the first hour of the film, I couldn't help but think of James Wood's criticism of White Teeth and similar novels of the style he labels 'hysterical realism.' As he put it, "An excess of storytelling has become the contemporary way of shrouding, in majesty, a lack; it is the Sun King principle. That lack is the human." Within the first hour, Sono has a quasi-religious School of Upskirt Photography with its own sacred writings and martial arts techniques; a teenage boy who sins to please his dad, a Catholic priest, in confession, and can only get an erection if he finds a girl who reminds him of the Virgin Mary; this boy becomes the King of the Upskirt Photographers and gains his own disciples. This is very entertaining, but too zany, too eager to please with "showy liveliness" that hangs off the characters "like jewelry." It is not the lack of plausibility that is difficult to handle, but the lack of human emotion and relationship in these conceptual rather than emotional connections.

With the second hour, Sono begins to truly redeem his narrative. With all the elements in place from the first hour, with the characters and their histories established, he begins to delve into real human emotion. The story is surprisingly simple in its outline: a Catholic priest and his son, Yu, are both 'perverts,' the priest for having had relations with a woman while a priest and Yu for being an upskirt photographer. Koike, a female regional director for a fast-growing cult, the Church of Zero, is a puritanical sociopath who becomes obsessed with Yu and so concocts a plan to convert Yu's Catholic family as an example to others that the Church of Zero is the religion to join. The love of Yu's life, Yoko, who is the adopted daughter of the woman Yu's father is marrying, becomes the means by which Koike will dominate the family. While the damage has been done, to an extent, by the first hour, by making the connections between many of the characters so fragile, based on the mere use of the phrase 'original sin,' or on one character accidentally appearing like the Virgin Mary, the remaining three hours focus entirely on the emotions and relationships of these characters. Yu's unrequited love for Yoko and the machinations of Koike, as well as a subplot involving the Catholich Church's refusal to allow a priest to marry, give Love Exposure a very solid emotional core.

Despite the shortcomings I point out above, Sono is overwhelmingly successful with Love Exposure. Every human is different, has a distinct psychology that comes from a unique upbringing and set of experiences; how the quest for love and how love itself are expressed in each person will differ. Somewhere along the way, ideologies like Christianity restricted the ways in which love could be sought or expressed and all alternatives are labeled 'perverse.' Sono examines the category of the 'perverse,' but doesn't try to argue with the label. Rather he argues for its being embraced. What Sono contrasts to love is not perversion, but guilt; and guilt is what homogenization imposes on those deemed 'perverts.' Yu is unabashedly a pervert, embracing the category explicitly. But he's a pervert out of love: love for his mother who tells him to find a girl like the Virgin Mary; love for his father who is only fatherly when Yu confesses obscene sins; love for Yoko who prefers him in drag. So is Yu's father, a priest who wants to get married, a pervert out of love. The enemies are those who want to abolish perversion with guilt: Koike and the Church of Zero who want to crush Yu, the Catholic Church that won't allow Yu's father to marry.

Having only seen Sono's one earlier work Suicide Club, I am astonished by how much he has grown as an artist. While he was very good to begin with, Love Exposure is an outstanding achievement as both entertainment and art. Any who watch it will be engrossed and the four hours will just flitter away; and any who watch it will come away wiser, as I believe I have. It's a film that won't leave my mind for a very long while.

Endnotes
1. James Wood, "Human, All Too Inhuman," The New Republic Online (August 30, 2001). http://www.powells.com/review/2001_08_30.html