- Also known as:
- Love Exposure
- Year:
- 2008
- Country:
- Predominant Genre:
- Comedy
- Director:
- Best Performances:
- None
- Plot:
- Three emotionally abused people from the fringes of society get locked in a convoluted love triangle.
- Themes:
- Original Sin
- Political Correctness
- Similar To (in Plot, Theme or Style):
- Unknown
- Review Format:
- DVD
Melodramatic black comedy: Manga made flesh!
This film exposes the Christian tendency to valorise purity by an obsessive focus on sin to the extent that sinning is effectively encouraged in order for a process of redemption to take place. As if people can, ultimately, only be good by being bad.
The religion’s unhealthy belief that people are born with Original Sin means good people are never believed to be truly good - only good at acting the part. Such an ideology merely produces the wrongdoing for which it pretends to be the cure. Children are told they are lying when they claim they have done no wrong (no matter the facts in any issue) so to obtain their parents’ approval they simply do wrong.
This healthy disrespect for Roman Catholicism is emphasised by spiritual teachings which are really nothing more than a hatred of the flesh allied to a death-worshipping renunciation of life. This inevitably leads to emotional and physical violence rather than healthy and fulfilling lovemaking. Pubescent girls are whipped because their bodies sexually arouse their fathers; fathers are castrated in revenge.
The cleverness of this film is in its use of visual metaphors for human emotions. It needs this because the characters are archetypes that represent ideas rather than flesh-and-blood people one can get involved with. The whole issue of shy young virgin males looking at young females is expressed in exaggeratedly superhero terms as the latter are repeatedly and publicly photographed in kung fu style.
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