Strange Circus (2005)

This is an extremely artsy film. There's a lot of bold color as well as some interesting costuming that make it visually striking. The story is a little bit out there and if you fail to invest your total attention, you'll probably miss a puzzle piece that will be necessary at the end. It was confusing at times but that might just be that I speak only english and there are times when translating can have strange sentence structure. I still had some questions at the end and parts seemed to drag along. If you do decide to watch it, just go into it aware that the style is unique and you really should be prepared to give it your full attention.

When i saw Suicide Club for the first time i knew Sion Sono would come to be a director i would look out for, and with Strange Circus he delivers, that's not to say that you will automatically like this one if you loved suicide club, because this is is something different.If suicide club was his pitch black pulpy look at Japanese culture, this is his nightmarish avant garde look on a dysfunctional family. This is art-house the way it should be, confrontational, engaging and intelligent.This is at some points extremely unwatchable as it deals with themes such as incest, but the way it is portrayed is absolutely stylish but still jaw droppingly tense.It reminded me of David Lynch and Alejandro Jorodowsky because of the dreamlike sequences and the constant pondering on what is real and what isn't.This movie is shot beautifully, even Kubrick came to mind at some scenes. Without spoiling anything i can say that this movie is very open to interpretation and it works and many levels.I would highly recommend this movie to anyone who likes deeply psychological drama, horror and art-house combined), but a warning, this is not for the faint of heart and i can really understand why people would condemn this film as perverted trash (such as people will condemn Lars Von Triers Antichrist), although i genuinely think that anyone with a love for cinema would grasp the deeper things this movie has to offer and will enjoy the beauty in this nightmarish vision.

12year old Mitsuko is a student at her Father (Gozos) school. She is also the object of his perverse sexual gratification. Gozo locks her inside a cello case and makes her watch him and her mother during their sexual congress. Eventually, Taeko, the mother is persuaded to trade places; she now watches from within as Gozo rapes his daughter. The abuse continues at home and at the school Mitsuko attends where Gozo is headmaster. The dynamic of this malignant relationship is such that Taeko becomes jealous of her daughter and proceeds to physically abuse her whenever Gozo is away. During one particularly frenzied attack, Taeko slips and falls downstairs breaking her neck. Now Mitsuko is co-opted into the role of wife and, unable to endure the unending cycle of abuse, attempts suicide by jumping from a building. Although she survives the fall, she is now confined to a wheelchair. Gozo now sates his rapacious sexual appetite with a string of prostitutes, openly having sex in front of his paralysed daughter. The veracity Mitsukos horrific ordeal is challenged when, the possibility is raised that these events are fictional; taken from the manuscript of a controversial horror authors latest book. The latter part of this movie confronts the viewer with the questions; Who is the author? Where is Gozo? What has become of Mitsuko? The answers to these questions lie in the damaged and fragmented minds of the players. Ultimately, there is a reckoning, with a cruel vengeance brought upon those responsible. I see this movie as being an allegory of the disintegration of Japanese society. Sion Sono returns to themes of loss of personal and group identity first covered in Suicide Club However, I believe that Norikos Dinner Table is his most coherent treatment of alienation and atomisation driven by westernisation Having watched this movie and having sat through the seemingly never-ending making of documentary (where the director provides no insight into his intention except, (he States in the opaque documentary of the making of this movie) 'to make a beautifully grotesque spectacle', my take is that Sion Sono vision is flawed. I get the allegory, I get the beautiful grotesqueness but I cannot accept the imagery of child sexual abuse as portrayed here. In many peoples minds child abuse is a taboo subject, and, rather like the way that the phrase 911 has become iconic, the subject of child abuse, particularly child sexual abuse has become a metaphor for the most unimaginably awful thing that can happen to a human being. This is of course, not the case. The worst thing that can happen to a human being is death, but, as children we point our finger at a playmate we say Bang! and death has now become a metaphor for Game Over, so now, when a filmmaker reaches into their bag of handy shocks there is little left. except for the depiction of children being used for sexual gratification. In the depiction of the abuse. The sexual abuse of children is surprisingly commonplace. As well as my own experience of abuse, it is a sad fact that as I get older, I discover that many of my friends and loved ones have endured abuse.In reality, children enduring abuse, have voices, they share their fears and hopes with a favourite doll, they cry to their teddy bears, they pray to Harry Potter, They pray to Hello Kitty. This is too raw a nerve to be touched upon by this director, instead, Mitsuko is objectified to little more than an icon; we do not hear her thoughts, we do not bear true witness to the bleakness of her soul. There is some vague voice-over about her home and school being littered with traps but this sounds more like a statement taken from the script notes rather than A genuine voice. I believe that Sion Sono does a great disservice to genuine survivors of abuse when he presents Mitsuko in such a simplified manner. I therefore can not, in all conscience recommend this movie

Speaking of violence, Sion Sono(director of Suicide Club)'s latest film Strange Circus, is an erotic horror story, steeped in incest, pedophilia, trans-sexuality, and screaming. Sometimes were in a carnival, other times walking down a blood covered hallway that looks like the inside of a giant monster, other times within a cello case watching our parents do the deed, or gazing at a creaky carousel which never quite works. These images are hammered down over and over again, punctuated always by more crying and screaming, until like many modern Japanese horror films, the narrator is proved to be unreliable and then identity's of the characters go switching around. Its a lot more focused than Suicide Club, more visual texture and beauty, cleaner, crisper performances mostly. I've heard this mentioned as part of the "ero-goru"(erotic grotesque nonsense) a growing genre in Japan in porn, literature, and film; Giger, Lovecraft, and Sada Abe mixed in a wet dream. This film does attempt to delve not only into the genre, but the production of the genre itself(who writes it and why), however by the end, were given a revenge story that doesn't seem to fit well with the subdued nihilist realism of the rest of the movie, unlike Suicide Club it doesn't invoke laughter or a sense of the tragicomic or socially relevant satire, it's just grotesque, then kinda stupid, still pretty, but less erotic. It almost had me, but it's insistence on cliché in the end(chainsaws and chains and fake limbs), make it lose any redemptive value. Gozu and Visitor Q, are better samples of the genre, if better is the right word.