For me, "Love Exposure" is something of a terrific one-off experience. How to begin to describe with any degree of rationality the extraordinary effect of bewildering excitement it has had on a near octogenarian, is a task I find daunting. And yet for a work unlike any other in its helter-skelter delivery of an adolescent's quest for romantic fulfilment ( which I suppose is what it is all about), I feel I should at least take up the challenge. With such an engagingly innocent central character as schoolboy Yu, it seems completely natural to suspend disbelief and go along with everything he experiences, including his hilarious initiation into the skills of a panty photographer, his role as father-confessor at a perverts' convention and his attack with explosives and much blood letting on the HQ of a brainwashing religious cult. Buried beneath it all there could well be many serious messages (you get a big chunk of Corinthians!) or it could be just a pile of tosh. But in the end, who cares, such is the delirious pleasure that just under four hours of outrageous goings-on have delivered. I suppose I just love the theme of innocent youngsters taking on the wicked world. Gosh! I am still reeling, my critical faculties all but shattered!
