Synopsis

Three emotionally abused people from the fringes of society get locked in a convoluted love triangle. Yuu, a Catholic boy searching for true love ends up taking erotic photographs of women in public until he discovers Yoko, whom he sees as his Virgin Mary. Yoko, an antifamily, misandristic girl finds that her foster mother will be marrying Yuu's father. Koike, an "original sinner", coordinates a plan to convert Yuu's family to her cult. Under her careful direction, their lives come crashing together in one fateful street fight.

Production Budget Analysis

The production budget for Love Exposure (2008) has not been publicly disclosed.

CAST: Takahiro Nishijima, Hikari Mitsushima, Sakura Ando, Makiko Watanabe, Atsuro Watabe, Yutaka Shimizu DIRECTOR: Sion Sono CINEMATOGRAPHY: Sohei Tanikawa MUSIC: Tomohide Harada PRODUCTION: Omega Project

Box Office Performance

Theatrical box office data is not publicly available for Love Exposure (2008). This may indicate a limited release, direct-to-streaming, or a release predating modern box office tracking.

Profitability Assessment

Insufficient publicly available data to assess profitability.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Summary: 17 wins & 3 nominations total

CRITICAL RECEPTION

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Love Exposure holds an approval rating of 91% based on 22 reviews, with an average rating of 7.74/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "An engagingly funny melodrama as well as an ambitious exploration of sexual behavior, Sion Sono's Love Exposure provides nearly four hours of extremely strange and entertaining cinema." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100 based on 11 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Jaime Grijalba of Brooklyn Magazine wrote that "nothing can prepare anyone for the madness of this profound work of love, perversion, religion, friendship and conspiracies. It’s the most bombastic work of Japanese Cinema of the past decade and maybe the only four-hour film you can watch more than three times [...] in a year." In 2015, Jasper Sharp of the British Film Institute listed it as one of the 10 great Japanese films of the 21st century. Freelance film critic Kenji Fujishima also voted Love Exposure the ninth greatest film of the century in BBC's 2016 poll.