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Rating: Shion Sono is one of the most experimental and original minds in Japanese cinema, alongside Takashi Miike and Shinya Tsukamoto. His stories are brutal, grotesque, cruel, sometimes poetic, sometimes disgusting (in a good way). Known in the West primarily for the masterpiece "Suicide Club," the director has also created other cinematic gems, named "Noriko's Dinner Table," a sort of prequel to "Suicide Club," where incestuous madness takes over, the grotesque "Exte," which pokes fun at the long-haired ghosts of Eastern horror, and of course, this "Strange Circus."
The plot is not easily summarized: it's a story within a story, a kind of puzzle that unfolds like Russian nesting dolls. Dreams and reality blur: the stories of a little girl who catches her parents in bed and is raped by her father, and that of a mentally ill writer who pens tales of incestuous love and meets an androgynous boy in love with her. In fact, although the two stories are only faintly connected (the girl's story is the same as the writer's book), they eventually blend, revealing a single, unsettling, incredible truth. Sono is a master of direction: he takes inspiration from Lynch and Kubrick but doesn't plagiarize, doesn't steal: he draws inspiration, showcasing his talent. Hence, Mitsuko's idea of being forced to stay in a cello case to watch her parents make love is as disturbing and cruel as it is childish. Because what is this film if not a child's nightmare? It opens with a circus, a macabre clownery, which is indeed part of a dream. Similarly, the film concludes, the end of the show, like the end of a human life: an end so swift and fleeting that it leaves no escape.
"I was sentenced to death from birth" whispers little Mitsuko at the beginning of the film, with the naivety of a child who has discovered sex in a completely different way from the norm, who is terrified of the sound of a Ferris wheel, who loves her mother so much she pretends to be her.
Identity exchange underpins a grotesque, heartbreaking, sometimes comedic film. This exchange happens constantly and confuses until the resolution of the final puzzle, where all the pieces return to their place.
And if the film often loses weight and soul, becoming dull, trust me, Sono knows how to lift your spirits, waking you with revelations that are nothing short of shocking, wrapped in wonderful cinematography where the predominant color is red (the roses encircling a coffin, the walls, the school chalk, the school desks, the blood, the shoes, the clothes...), a violent color that is also, paradoxically, the color of love.
Hate, Love, Sex, Violence intertwine and meld in a whirlwind of madness that rises to the eye of the storm.
"I am the mother and the mother is me... the only difference between me and her is that she is happy when she makes love"
Mitsuko sends chills down the spine, as does the writer who narrates her story, hiding many secrets she doesn't remember. Despite being rich and famous, she lives in a filthy dump flooded with papers, with only one cello in the small house.
And here we, too, are confused with her. We are Takao, Takao is us.
Shion Sono weaves his plot with incredible skill, making us part of his life, but also Mitsuko's, that of the androgynous Yuji, and the cruel father of Mitsuko, who is also the principal of her school. Everyone is a part of us, a different and well-defined character.
And the disastrous writer's house is a metaphor.
A devastated abode for a devastated heart.
Ours.
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