Love Exposure (2008)

Hailed as a "bizarre, baroque, hilarious epic" (Total Film) and a "crazy, perversely monumental teen comedy romance" (Metro) on its UK theatrical release in October, director Sion Sono's Love Exposure comes to DVD on 11th January 2010 as a two-disc release courtesy of Third Window Films.

Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize and the Caligari Film Award at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival, the latest film from acclaimed Japanese writer-director Sion Sono (Exte: Hair Extensions), Love Exposure is a monumental work of cinema that manages to combine comedy, action, romance and drama into its compelling, satirical and frequently violent commentary on religion, morality, sexual perversion and, of course, love, both requited and unrequited.

Following the untimely death of his mother during his early childhood, Tokyo teenager Yu (Takahiro Nishijima) is raised by his father, Tetsu (Atsuro Watabe), who has dealt with his grief by becoming a Catholic priest. Despite his new calling, Tetsu is seduced into a love affair with an emotionally unstable parishioner, an act that causes him to transfer his guilt onto Yu, whom he forces to attend confession as often as possible. Eager to satisfy his father's demands, but quickly running out of false transgressions to own up to, Yu begins to find new and genuine sins to confess, the most effective of which proves to be taking covert up-skirt panty photographs of young women on the city's streets. Eventually, Yu's misdemeanours attract the attention of teenage girl Aya Koike (Sakura Ando) - a con artist, coke dealer, the regional leader of a bizarre religious cult and a victim of paternal abuse - who decides she can use the wayward 'king of perverts' for her own means.

Shortly after their auspicious meeting, a cross-dressing incident resulting from a lost bet also brings Yu into contact with Kurt Cobain-loving, but otherwise totally man-hating, schoolgirl Yoko (Hikari Mitsushima), with whom he falls instantly in love. The fates of this trio become hopelessly connected and sealed when Yu's father decides to give up the cloth to marry his lover and Yu discovers that Yoko is about to become his stepsister!

Running at just under four hours (although moving at such a brisk pace it's barely noticeable) and already being hailed as Sion Sono's career masterpiece in many quarters, Love Exposure stars Hikari Mitsushima (Shaolin Girl; Death Note: The Last Name; Death Note), Takahiro Nishijima (star of Japanese TV's Ghost Friends), Sakura Ando (Crime Or Punishment) and Astsuro Watabe (Echo Of Silence) and was the recipient of the 2009 awards for the Best Asian Film, the Jury Prize for Best Female Performance (Hikari Mitsushima), the Jury Special Prize for Feature Film and the Most Innovative Film at Montreal's Fant-Asia Film Festival.

Please note - Disc special features are subject to change, may differ from format to format and/or may differ from region to region.