Sion Sono
The Forest Of Love

There are infinite doubts about our existence, we may have a glimpse of our current image, consider ourselves strong and gentle but it might just be the sick reflection of our mask in a dark and brackish lake. Do you know what I think of you? Exactly the opposite of what you've believed your whole life.

What is a druid doing writing a narrative on Debaser? I find no trace of my Taranis here.

What is The Donald doing, passively and thoughtfully witnessing, the launching of thunder and light from Space X?

What is Sion Sono doing, born from the procreation and algorithmic madness of Netflix, after an acidic and lysergic night, in the most nerdy and politically correct/corrupted mainstream lineup? As they say in the jargon, a phantom and subversive ONE SHOT. In one fell swoop, the goal is to break the bank, to be observed and possibly unsettled by the new nightmares of civil society. No experiments, no dogma, no representation of one's cinematic experience, abridged in deference to the Netflix algorithm, just another kick in the stomach to make you writhe inertly once more, always over the same filthy latrine and bloodied from the marrow.

There are infinite doubts about our being and our relationships, and here comes into play, in the heart of the calmest reflection, our author, with a baffling work just like the previous ones, intrinsically indie in the strictest sense and autonomous from any external imposition, here dwells only the genius but also the madness of Sono. You have talent, but why do you write reviews on Debaser? Did you perhaps get bad grades at school? When you came home, did your mother not give you the due attention? No... unfortunately there is none of that here...

Can an entire generation be described through a precise identification in the civilization of pain? Sono manages it in his own way, with the emphasis that distinguishes him and alternating pure madness with a directorial virtuosity of which he is the supreme master but not subject. In the vulgarity that characterizes Sono's aesthetics, his high directorial insights stand out, placing him, within his subversive stamp, in the Olympus of the Greats. Use of distorted lenses in Mitsuko's intimate moments, Pachelbel's notes, and continuous calls of brilliant metacinema and a dreamlike ending that closes the entire work like a magic circle.

The main character, Murata, is the emblem of Western capitalist society, older than his innocent companions but seductive and perverse, a sick reflection of a disturbing and dangerous light. Can you remain impartial in the face of this chaos, this prayer to pain and suicide?

Do you have an escape route? Also because, avoiding spoilers dangerously, here there seems to be no escape route, not a magical ending like that of Love Exposure, but a return or the staging of it, to the peace of that ghostly prologue. At the end of the race, only the predators most blinded by the pain of broken love and their chosen victims remain alive, who, seduced and deceived by their master's mirage, have found the perdition they deserve.

In the end credits (in fact the story takes up a real fact that happened in Japan in the 70s), comes the caption with the real facts, with the perdition of the plot that paradoxically becomes even more abstract, a higher final moment, almost religious, which contrasts with the preceding desperate screams, making the whole film disappear under a cloud of sulfur and among the branches of the forest of love, in a perennial dialectic between Sin and Beauty.

There are infinite doubts about our existence, we may have a glimpse of our current image, consider ourselves strong and gentle but it might just be the sick reflection of our mask in a dark and brackish lake. Do you know what I think of you? Exactly the opposite of what you've believed your whole life. I don't know if it's possible, I would rather not see stars, I adore rather the absolute void, at the limit, if the school verb cannot be completely eradicated, put crosses.