Hisayasu Sato
The Bedroom

"I want the viewer, after watching one of my films, to choose between two options: either commit suicide or murder" [Hisayasu Sato]

WELCOME TO HELL.
Don't feel obliged to read this review. Everything contained within it might turn against you, slowly staining you.

Because Hisayasu Sato is certainly (there's no doubt here), the most cursed and sick director that has ever appeared on planet Earth. A monster of pinku-eiga, a low genre exploited to achieve the maximum of artistic and expressive creativity in order to stage every vile vision. Sato's cinema originates from the gut, from the flies of centuries-old rotting corpses, from the dirty smell of blood. It emerges from filth and reaches Eden.
But don't confuse him with a pervert: Sato is a complete author. His is a complex and precise, surgical poetics capable of addressing complex social and human issues in 60-minute films through allegories, but we will talk about that later.

First of all, two notions:
- Hisayasu Sato seems to be openly asexual, and this condition was allegedly caused by sexual abuse by his stepfather during adolescence. Sato has repeatedly stated that he is not attracted to either men or women: it is through cinema that the author vents his instincts, speaking in grotesque tones of both heterosexual and homosexual desire. Cinema, by definition, is the medium of dreams, a medium where anything is possible: this aspect is predominant in all of Sato’s films, all (to a greater or lesser extent) metacinematic.

- In one of his most famous films, the one I am about to talk about, "The Bedroom" (1992), one of the protagonists is Issei Sagawa. If this name means nothing to you, know that he's a piece of shit, plain and simple. Known for having killed a fellow university student, having abused her corpse, and having eaten her body piece by piece, his case became even more controversial because he got away with it. Thanks to his prodigious bank account, he managed to circumvent three types of justice (French - the incident occurred in Paris - Canadian - the girl was Canadian and the family's ongoing complaints were to no avail - and Japanese, despite its well-known rigidity) and to become a star (!), writing best-sellers and even an editorial for a well-known national tabloid.

Good. I know your indignation is through the roof now.
I myself wonder what happened to justice and moral value in the face of Sagawa's case, but I want to talk about cinema. So, just this once, let's put these kinds of issues aside and focus solely on the film itself. Not on who shot it or who acted in it, because that is how a work should ALWAYS be evaluated.

What is "The Bedroom" about? Hisayasu Sato is inspired by a classic of Japanese literature, "The House of the Sleeping Beauties" by Kawabata, to tell us about an universe of latex and despair. Characters ashamed of their perversions and fetishes have the opportunity to enter a room where they are sedated with a sleeping pill. During their sleep, other characters will contribute to making the sleeper live out their wildest desires. Then it happens that the story suddenly turns into a thriller: a girl dies inside her room, and her sister, unable to overcome it, decides to solve the mystery.

Do not expect, however, either an erotic film or a high-tension thriller, because Sato’s films are always standalone works, mysterious and cryptic objects where deciphering is sometimes completely useless. You have to let the film silently stab you with its slow, cathartic rhythm, its unclear transitions, and its symbolism. The resulting work is complex and rich with interpretations, like all the author's other endeavors.
Underneath the veneer of sordidness lies yet another study of Japanese society: a reflection on a country living within an irresolvable oxymoron. A country, at the same time permissive, open, and cutting-edge, but simultaneously rigid, orderly, cold, and alienating. Where pure sexual desire turns into perversion, where murders are committed without the slightest reconsideration, and where communication cannot exist without violence.
There's also a whole discourse on cinema: cinema as a means for anything being possible. Where the denunciation of reality can insinuate itself between the creases of the unexpressed, where everything conveyed in cinema must necessarily be more beautiful and fascinating, because it's in the grip of the balance between "truth" and "fiction". 

According to this, Werner Herzog taught us that: "A film where everything is fake and planned is dead. A film where everything is unplanned to show the raw and bare reality is nevertheless dead. Cinema lives when a balance between reality and fiction is created."

Thus, in one of the film's most emblematic scenes, the female protagonist records her sexual act with a camera while engaged in sterile autoerotism. She does not experience it: she watches it live on a television screen beside her and can only get excited by watching it. 
Sato's universe is dominated by voyeurs, even in "The Bedroom", where eyes are closed, covered, asleep...

A complex universe, where even the saying "Love is blind" is explained in cinematic and scientific terms. Because in the dark catharsis of senses and in the descent into the filthiest infernos, Sato always brings love as the cure for all ills. 
As in "Muscle" (1988), his masterpiece, a severed arm returned to the beloved and the choice to blind oneself allowed a couple to fully live in love, even in "The Bedroom" the emotional bond becomes the cure for violence. 

Dark and troubled, "The Bedroom" is a difficult film, not suitable for all tastes (and if you're new to Sato, don't start with this). Yet terribly fascinating, destined to grow with time.
An hermetic vision, extraordinarily timeless. And excruciatingly painful. 

I've left you the ticket to hell.
Will you go or not?