Metacritic reviews

Most disturbing and fascinating is the mixture of Izumi’s liberation with her degradation in this film, which plays like a more horrific version of David Lynch’s “Mullholland Drive.”

Though it begins with the aesthetic and conceptual rigor of Blade Runner, it quickly veers toward the gratuitous outlandishness of a Bruce La Bruce film.

It’s a conversation starter: a cultish exploration of female sexuality in a culture dominated by prostitution and patriarchy.

Filmed in garish colours like an explosion in a paint factory, it’s more style than content, but diverting all the same.

There are too many twists, insignificant literary references and drawn-out scenes of sex and violence to sustain either the pic’s running time or its ideas, with Sono’s message obscured in the final reels by an ambiguous treatment of his leading ladies.

Mostly, Guilty of Romance seems content allowing characters to verbally abuse each other before eventually reaching the inevitable conclusion that life is a burden and all love is illusory.

Although the film’s dark humor and colorful, thriller aesthetics provide some juicy material at the beginning, its overindulgence in chatter, fornication and occasional gore feels too blatant to make Sono’s social commentary run anywhere but skin-deep.

The pungent, ponderous final chapter of Sono's "Hate" trilogy (following Love Exposure and Cold Fish) bows out with lots of bangs and plenty of whimper.