love and other cults review

it's not a rare occasion for me to watch a movie, although i confess that i've been watching less and less lately, so it came as a surprise to me that i decided on a whim to watch this.

people who know me are probably well aware that i've developed a severe interest in the series haikyuu, and the resulting stage play - engeki haikyuu. the iconic lead of the series is played by actor, suga kenta, and the trailer of this film paints in broad strokes the plot of him falling in love with this girl. this was 100% the incentive for me to watch the show - i just really like suga kenta.

because there is actually a character CALLED kenta in this movie - i will now continue to refer to suga kenta as his character in the movie - Ryota, and if i do refer to the actor, ill be using the full name so nobody gets confused.

so the whole film, has a kind of interesting paleness, in the sense that it's one of those art housey films that do a lot yet don't tell you anything at the same time.

i also wanna note that the trailer makes this movie seem a LOT more fun and interesting than it actually is.

the opening is probably the most interesting part of the movie - 3 boys call a random number on a phone wall for "free sex", and after the girl shows up, a bunch of delinquent dudes show up and terrorize them. she's assumedly, in cahoots with them, but that never really goes into any depth and you that entire line is dropped.

after this - the general gist/synopsis of the story follows the short expose of a girl called "ai" who's mother is explicitly stated to be a religious nut who joins a bunch of random cult-y religions and because she's so fed up with her daughter being an attention seeker, she sends her off to a random cult run by this white man called lavi, which is pretty much the salvation of her life. she gets to be loved, gets attention, is the keystone of their little cult until he gets caught and all the members are sent to prison. what happens after this is pretty much like, the fall out of her mental instability that's oddly narrated over by Ryota, who claims to be in love with her.

he meets her in a class for the first time and it more or less goes in a somewhat chronological fashion - she falls in with this guy who lives with his family and their partners who just lie around, steal, smoke and drink and fuck, and ryota finds her and just watches her.

after her boyfriend ups and leaves her after a clash with some girls he got in trouble with, she gets buried alive. ryota shows up to save her, but she walks away from him and gets picked up by a girl who she met while living with her ex boyfriend. the girl takes her home, and eventually they informally adopt her. the girl also has a massive crush on ryota because they go to the same school. eventually, ai becomes the favorite, and the girl who insisted her parents take care of ai, starts to resent her instead. after ai helps her confess to ryota, he points to ai and says he actually is in love with her, and eventually its this whole showdown where the girl throws a tantrum. there's also this weird sexual undertone with the dad that happens throughout this sequence but i Did Not enjoy it. the girl eventually finds out ai is working at a hostess club for money, rats her out to the 'dad' and then he gets really angry, she tries to seduce him - but they kick her out because they're just conservative.

so she disappears, and after that, ryota has a little sad boy moment where he just feels like life is worthless. he keeps trying to make money and stash it somewhere so he can make enough to escape out of the town, she becomes some sort of escort? sexy masseur? and bumps into ryota after a work sesh. she brings him home, he meets her mom, and then there's this kinda odd moment where they look at each other while smoking, he sulks a bit and then they kiss for a little bit, he pushes her off, she asks him to hit her harder, and then he tries to make her leave the house, begging her to leave with him and to go to toyko, or just anywhere but here.

she rejects him, says her name is Ananda, and then they never see each other again.

her cult leader lavi gets released from prison, and he comes back around as a porn director this time, and ananda goes back to him, underneath his wings and he takes care of her. she's loved again, with everyone who adores her, fans and that.

the movie ends when you see ryota now as a straight laced university student in tokyo, where his friends talk about 'calling a number on a wall', and he lines up for a fan sign where ai/ananda is, and apologizes to her. she runs out after him, and she's about to confess something before we're thrown back into the past, where they meet.

he laments - "first love, strikes everyone in an instant. it's been a while since that moment, yet it stays with me forever."  - and during a lunch at school, she stands up and confronts Ryota, slamming her hand on the desk and telling him that she isn't like him at all, and that she will never be like him, before having a pseudo breakdown and running outside with the teacher following her. the only time you see him smile is when he looks out the window at her running away, eating his bread.
"this is my love story, every story comes to an end and a new story begins"
the end.

indispersed through this whole storyline is the yakuza line - ryota joins the gang he was originally tricked into for a scam, comprised of Kenta and Yuji, and a pervy old dude who is like 'the big head' but isnt really that relevant. there's this little side story where Kenta (also refreshingly, his race is literally never a topic that anyone dwells on) falls in love with a scuba diving girl (Reika) that he bumps into. he's smart and doesn't like getting involved too deep in the darker side of deliquency, and so when he meets this girl, he kind of starts turning over a new leaf. they're super cute and fluffy, until Juri gets really pissed that Kenta's not really involved with 'the boys' anymore, and then they strike up a deal with the big boss to capture and drug up Kenta's girlfriend, while they sort of sexually take advantage of her although what actually happens isn't clear, an they taser Kenta, and beat him up. Kenta makes a lil come back, one hit KO's the boss - who dies - and then the movie ends with him scuba diving while she watches him with a blank face.

Yuji on the other hand, is like a real yakuza wannabe, he talks big, isn't really that great at being muscle or anything, but he thrives off the feeling of being a powerful guy, and kind of just being a dick in general. over the course of the movie, he gets his little moments, he gets beat up, starts whacking people with bats, and then in the end is the one who lies to Kenta's girlfriend, starts slagging off Kenta so he can get a leg up, until Kenta does a drive by murder, and he stows the body in the trunk of the jaguar, tries to pick up girls, picks up ryota instead, and drives him off to the middle of nowhere, where ryota eventually hits him with the golf club and walks off.

this is pretty much as short as i can get the retelling to be honest, because it really is just kinda odd, nothing happens, yet a lot happens.

frankly the entirety of the film is somewhat puzzling in itself, so let's kinda break this down step by step.

firstly, i don't really understand the need for ryota's presence. he doesn't really do much for the film except potter about and look sad (and attractive), and it's almost confusing to me how this guy with such a shallow yet invested interest in Ai becomes the predominant voice. to me, it's sort of like 500 days of summer esque, a man in love with a woman who dictates the whole story of her life without ever considering her perspectives or how she acts. he's there, and he seems sympathetic to her story, but if we really break down and remove all of his voice over narration, he's not really necessary to the story at all.
there are implications about how and why they're friends or how they get to know each other, but that is never touched upon, and more troubling, is that we never actually know anything about him at all. he has no family, nothing to go back to, he just floats from place to place with no backstory that we can relate to, and eventually tries to cut himself clean and reinvents himself in Tokyo as a prim and proper university boy. it feels, so strange that we follow him for so much of the movie and we never find out anything about him.

on the subject of ai, everyone does give props to Sairi Ito's acting, and I think she does a great job of embodying that sense - or lack thereof - of self. while the wigs and the makeup are a little dollar store, there's a sort of charming innocence to her character that has that edge of desperation to it, its difficult to understand, hard to grasp, and is overall just a weird, strange transcendence to it.

however, the most interesting character is Yuji, played by Kaito Yoshimura. The way he carries himself through the whole of this film just embodies the character, his face is wonderfully expressive and his character development is somehow more satisfying from the very little screen time he's given in comparison to Ryota and Ai. There's just an amazing physicality to his character and the way he looks and acts, it's insanely earnest and so striking. it's a shame he wasn't given more time, because his scenes are so unsettling, but they give so much rawness. his performance in this is 10/10.

in terms of the story arc itself, I would have to say that there's an odd clash that happens. the storylines aren't really foils, the characters aren't really reflections or challenges to each other, and so the underlying story of the yakuza/kenta/girlfriend thread being peppered in so haphazardly is just a strange choice to me. because it never says anything about Ai, and it never concludes any sort of message, and the way that Reika becomes a kind of, passive tool for the men to play off is a bit of a boring and overused trope that isn't executed in any particularly interesting way.

to be honest, my first impression of the film was like, they were just unfinished vignettes of ideas that were strung together and hung out as a film, and then turned into ... an unfinished film. the start of the film is strong, incredibly promising and leads you somewhere, until you find yourself fizzling out towards the end of the film, tired, worn out and a little bit confused. it's not a satisfying film to watch, but thats perhaps the point.

in a way, i like to think that this film is a homage to the light at the end of the tunnel, an ode to small town misfits who go through life trying to find themselves during those difficult trying times of middle school and high school, trying to find yourself, shifting through identities, falling deeply in love with people who you'll never truly know and successfully running away from who you used to be. perhaps it's just going from place to place until you're back exactly where you started, just older and more broken.

the end of the film, in its unfinished glory (a trademark of japaneseisms, just never giving things closure) is something i expected, and there's actually something incredibly satisfying to really round off the movie with.

ryota laments that he's in love, but Ai goes up to his table, slams her hands on his table, and shouts in his face, "i am not like you. i never fear solitude. i transcend."
"okay, you aren't like me. you're one of a kind" he replies.

that moment explains a lot, more importantly, kind of why he falls in love. she's the one who calls him out on his shit for the first time, and in a little school, in a tiny town where they don't fit in, it almost makes it feel like they fit together.
except the whole film is demonstrating, how far they dont.

in a way, i enjoyed this film. there were some unexpectedly touching and emotional moments that felt just. real and painful.

except in a lot of ways, it kind of feels like the failed experiment of trying to let manic pixie dream girls have their own little stories, but falls into many of the same traps that a lot of movies have done before. a lot of the more western reviews have already critiqued the same points to the death- are we really providing the women with any autonomy, is sexual assault as revenge something we should still be using as a plot because of how horrific it is, is the whole movie problematic because it only gives male perspectives - and all of these are arguably legitimate and sound points, but it's not really what i want to dwell on.

for me, the biggest struggle while watching this movie was to understand what exactly the director was trying to say underneath the steady, slow shots of the movie. what does he want to impart? what was the intention of this film?
a lot of the times, i tend to stay away from art house films because they often feel vapid and empty, like wandering through an empty garden with a kaleidoscope. the majority of the focus falls on the offbeat feeling of the movie rather than any sort of compelling story, and while, i confess, perhaps i may just be overindulgent on mainstream media and traditional storytelling, this movie feels oddly empty, and vacuously light in comparison to the heavy topics it chooses to serenade.

all in all, i can't say i recommend this movie.
if you'd like to watch suga kenta in more things, probably opt for another movie, or just rewatch the stage plays again.