I saw this movie today at the Viennale at an afternoon screening and i had a hard time to sit thru it. it seemed overly pretentious and misogynistic to me. don't get me wrong, i enjoyed visitor q and i realized the Belle de Jour, Vivre Sa Vie references. But Shion Sono was not able to pull of the absurd combinations of violence and sexuality that made these movies work. on the opposite. it seemed like a constant male masturbation fantasy with a few literature references tossed in to justify it. even looking at it from an exploitation angle, it just failed to deliver. the acting was less than convincing and at best as average as the mise en scene and also the use of music was terrible, constantly failing to set the counterpoint as obviously originally intended. in the end it left the bitter taste of a conservative paradigm where women were punished for their sexuality, got their private parts cut of and were kicked in the stomach. anyway, there seems to be innocence in pissing.
Review of Guilty of Romance
