Guilty of Romance
恋の罪
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A novelist's timid wife is initiated into street prostitution by a university lecturer — loosely from the 1997 Tokyo 'OL murder'.
On a day of heavy rain in Maruyama-cho, the love-hotel district of Shibuya, a woman is found murdered in a derelict apartment, the character for 'castle' written on the wall beside her. The call reaches Detective Kazuko Yoshida in a love hotel, where she is meeting her lover; at home she has a husband and a child. Tracing missing women, she arrives at two names.
Izumi Kikuchi is the wife of a famous novelist, Yukio, who leaves at seven every morning to write, comes home at nine, wants his slippers placed just so and rarely touches her. To fill her days she takes a part-time job handing out sausage samples in a supermarket. A woman from a so-called modelling agency flatters her into a shoot that turns out to be for pornography, and Izumi finds she likes being looked at. She starts walking the streets in revealing clothes, and through Kaoru, a young man who runs a call-girl business, she meets Mitsuko Ozawa, a literature professor by day who sells herself in Maruyama-cho by night. Mitsuko becomes her teacher: sex without love should be paid for, however little, because the price is what the man thinks she is worth. She introduces Izumi to her mother, a woman of old family who despises her, and confides that she loved her late father as a woman loves a man. A line of Ryuichi Tamura's poetry keeps returning: I should never have learned words.
Then Izumi discovers that her husband has been buying Mitsuko again and again in the derelict apartment, for the sake of his novels, and that Mitsuko knew from the start whose wife she was. There the two women fight. Mitsuko, who has long wanted to die, goads Izumi on; her mother, there with Kaoru, wants her daughter dead too; and between them they kill Mitsuko.
When Kazuko reaches the Ozawa house, the mother sits waiting, calm and relieved, and in a back room Kaoru has taken his own life. Yukio keeps up appearances. Izumi has vanished; she is last seen drifting through a fishing port with nothing left but her body. Kazuko, a bag of rubbish in each hand, runs after a garbage truck until she finds herself back in Maruyama-cho.
Starring
Megumi Kagurazakaas Izumi Kikuchi
The dutiful wife of a famous novelist, who breaks out of a sexless, regimented marriage into pornography and prostitution.
Izumi Kikuchi’s story
Izumi keeps house for Yukio, who lives by a strict routine and rarely touches her. She takes a job handing out sausage samples, is flattered into a modelling shoot that turns out to be pornography, and finds she likes being looked at. She walks the streets in revealing clothes, and through Kaoru, who runs a call-girl business, meets Mitsuko, a professor who sells herself by night and becomes her teacher: sex without love should be paid for, because the price is what the man thinks she is worth. Then Izumi learns that Yukio has been buying Mitsuko again and again, and that Mitsuko knew all along whose wife she was. The two women fight in the derelict apartment, and Mitsuko is killed. Izumi vanishes. She is last seen drifting through a fishing port with nothing left but her body.
Makoto Togashias Mitsuko Ozawa
A literature professor by day and a streetwalker by night, who draws Izumi into her world.
Mitsuko Ozawa’s story
Mitsuko takes Izumi, a novelist's wife, as her pupil, teaching her that sex without love should be paid for, since the price is what the man thinks she is worth. She introduces Izumi to her mother, a woman of old family who despises her, and confides that she loved her late father as a woman loves a man. A line of poetry follows them: I should never have learned words. All along Mitsuko has known that Izumi's husband, Yukio, is one of her regular clients, buying her again and again in a derelict apartment for the sake of his novels. When Izumi finds out, the two women fight there. Mitsuko, who has long wanted to die, goads Izumi on; her mother, there with Kaoru, wants her dead too; and between them they kill her.
Miki Mizunoas Kazuko Yoshida
A homicide detective with a husband and child, carrying on an affair of her own as she investigates the killing.
Kazuko Yoshida’s story
Kazuko gets the call about the body in Maruyama-cho while she is in a love hotel with her lover; at home she has a husband and a child. Tracing missing women, she arrives at Izumi and Mitsuko and follows their story back through the love-hotel streets. At the Ozawa house she finds Mitsuko's mother waiting, calm and relieved, and Kaoru dead in a back room, having taken his own life. She visits Izumi's husband and watches him keep up appearances. At the end, carrying a bag of rubbish in each hand, she runs after a garbage truck until she finds herself back in Maruyama-cho. When her lover phones to ask where she is, she says she does not know.
Kanji Tsudaas Yukio Kikuchi
Izumi's husband, a bestselling novelist of fastidious habits who keeps his wife at a distance.
Hisako Okataas Shizu Ozawa
Mitsuko's mother, from an old family, who regards her daughter as a stain on its name.
Why it matters
Guilty of Romance starts from a real case, the 1997 murder of a Tokyo Electric Power economist who sold sex at night in the same streets of Shibuya. Sion Sono turns it into the double lives of three women, a detective, a professor and a novelist's wife, and into a question about worth: what a woman becomes when her marriage values her as a housekeeper and the street at least names a price. Mitsuko's lesson, that a man's money is his verdict on her, is the film's most unsettling idea, and it leads nowhere good. The film premiered in the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes and is deliberately excessive; one reviewer there expected accusations of misogyny and read it instead as misanthropy, with no one, man or woman, coming off well. What stays is Izumi's hunger to be seen, and how little the respectable world ever answered it.