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Rating: Everything I've lost I can find in you...
It's incredible how in Japan horror and splatter can become a creative flair, a way to break away from normality and associate absurdities with perfection and the simplest and most complex feelings. It's incredible how in Japan sagas can also have no common connecting points, can jump from one genre to another, destroy everything that has been created, and create a new method of filmmaking that will then be destroyed by a new genre.
"Guinea Pig" was, is, and will be one of the most controversial series in cinema, not just Japanese. Some call it a breaking point in the history of the seventh art, while others deny its essence, calling it a vulgarity, an excrement. The point of no return began with that debut, the cornerstone and initiator of the circle of torture: "Devil's Experiment," passed off as a fake snuff film, was peddled as real and turned the entire land of the rising sun upside down. Even worse with the now snuff-cult "Flowers Of Flesh And Blood," where Charlie Sheen, a well-known actor, fearing the tortures inflicted on the actress were real, alarmed authorities worldwide. From here on, from chaos, perdition, and perversion, the saga undertook a journey into the inferno, practically devouring all film genres: comedy (the hilarious "He Never Dies" and the dreadful "Devil Doctor Woman"), science fiction ("Android Of Notre Dame") and, who would have thought... even sentimental cinema.
"Mermaid In Manhole" is the celebration of the marriage between romantic cinema and virulent splatter. Two poles that are hard to associate, which often end up in the guillotine of the macabre when combined (Nekromantik), successful, of course, but when the macabre takes over, romance no longer makes sense.
Hideshi Hino managed to achieve the perfect union between love and death... two opposites that paradoxically prove to be complementary. In 62 minutes of duration, he managed to create a powerful masterpiece capable of wisely balancing these two elements, crafting a hallucinatory love story, with strong tones, which distances itself from the grotesque of "He Never Dies" and the snuff-like nature of the first two chapters.
A story drowned by madness that features a painter who decides to portray a dying mermaid found in the sewers. The painting will be made with the rivers of colors that gush from the unfortunate's wounds.
Art derived from the strongest emotions, from visceral pain, from passion castrated from a body now close to decay.
Thus, the rivers of blood, hard to bear, are compensated by an excellent dose of never ephemeral, but morbid, almost poetic and seductive via poignant romanticism. A delirium of rare pathos that ends with a seminal twist, as simple as it is thrilling.
A true work of art that has nothing of gratuitous violence and hides behind the splendid psychological construction of the characters and loves to play with quality by mixing horror with love, ugliness with beauty.
It's incredible to notice the ambiguity of the title: Manhole (Well, but also paradoxically asshole), a word that unites sex and squalor. Dirt and passion in a circle of love and death that could have ended definitively with a heart formed from the blood of memories. Worth recovering.
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