Review of Guilty of Romance (2011 Film):

The awesomely inappropriately titled Guilty of Romance is Sono Sion’s recent take on another dysfunctional family dynamic. It was billed as the final installment of a trilogy of movies; the first two being Love Exposure and Cold Fish. However, I’m not sure why these films are considered to be linked together in any way, and Sono has been making movies like this for a quite a while. Aside from the aforementioned films, Noriko’s Dinner Table, Suicide Club, Strange Circus, and several others all fit a similar mold.

Housewife Izumi, whose roll in society is masochistic by itself (many would agree) is slave of her cold husbands habits (lining up the slippers, making tea with a hourglass). Izumi is sexually unsatisfied and unfulfilled, and he is asexual (at first sight) and famous for writing and publicly reading his erotic novels. As soon as Izumi gets her first chance for sexual blooming and upheaval – she does it by the book: naked photos, sex on video, prostitution… Her sexuality, thus, rises from housewife, who wants to be pleased, to prostitute who wants to please. House perversions of Izumis’s husband culminates with sexual perversions which are far more appropriate than those that were happening in the house. Izumi, with her newly gained sexual freedoms, wants to start working. She finds a job as sausage salesgirl and in time, even sausages get bigger as her sexual appetite grows. While Izumi worked only for her husband (as housewife) she was completely deprived of pleasure (and romance), but together with first money came first ‘sausage’ of pleasure.

Tokyo and explosions of colors (and balloons) in combination with intense classical music is, in a way, a reason why you should see this film. Twice. And Izumi’s balloons, of course. In the end, I could say that many are guilty of something here, including the director, but they are definitely ‘not guilty of romance’.