THE FOREST OF LOVE. 1980s-set variation on the crime genre

When we fire up a Netflix-branded film, we generally expect something formally competent and smooth, feeling relatively safe from the risks of an “out-there” or broadly experimental viewing experience. Of course, there are exceptions to the platform’s unofficial norm. That’s because, as part of its artistic strategy, Netflix often chooses to entrust film projects to creators with a strong aesthetic identity. This was the case with Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, and it is also the case with The Forest of Love, signed by a radically different directorial personality—Sion Sono. Inspired by real crimes, this Japanese film is an unconventional 1980s-set variation on the crime genre, infused with elements of grotesque and exploitation cinema.

The plot of The Forest of Love revolves around a group of characters who become entangled in a chain of events resembling a violent nightmare. The spark that ignites the intrigue is the meeting of three young men—aspiring amateur filmmakers Jay and Fukami, and Shin, who plays music alone on the streets of Tokyo. Wanting to introduce their new friend to the world of erotic experience, the first two take him to the promiscuous Taeko. She, in turn, introduces the trio to her former schoolmate Mitsuko, hoping the boys will help her “break out of her shell,” where she has retreated after traumatic events several years prior. The final key player in Sono’s film is Mr. Murata, a charismatic manipulator who communicates with Mitsuko and has a past connection to Taeko.

At first, informed by Taeko of Murata’s villainous deeds, the protagonists decide to make a film about him—an exposé meant to reveal his schemes and warn potential victims, with Mitsuko at the forefront. The situation quickly becomes more complicated, and the relationships among the characters turn out not to be as clear-cut as they initially seemed. Falling under Mr. Murata’s spell and persuasion, the group—led by Jay and Shin—descends into genuine madness, full of violence, perversion, and danger. In the background, a serial killer stalks the city, shooting young girls with a gun stolen from the police. The case seems obviously connected to the protagonists, but it soon turns out not to be the darkest threat they will face.

The Forest of Love is the latest offering from Sion Sono, a director specializing in twisted films bursting with thematic and formal violence (Love Exposure, Himizu). His newest work is yet another wild vision, charging unguarded toward various transgressions along a path of grotesque and exaggeration. Sono immediately assaults viewers with sheer strangeness and maintains a dizzying pace throughout the two-and-a-half-hour narrative, weaving between plotlines and frequently testing the audience’s aesthetic tolerance. In The Forest of Love, the story is subordinated to a frenetic convention designed to generate an absurd, fragmented, and overblown form.

The film’s first half-hour is simply unbearable—amateurish-looking shots edited with no sense of order, caricatured characters (ranging from overly energetic to pretentiously tormented), sloppy intercutting of storylines, and kitsch radiating from every narrative element may leave viewers stunned or even repelled. From the outset, we become almost completely numb to the twists and nuances of the story—we simply don’t have time to ponder the meanings Sono serves us, being too busy trying to keep up with the headlong, blind rush of the plot.

Said plot brims with cheap tricks, sudden twists, grotesque humor, sexual perversion, and gore-rooted macabre. All of this creates a repellent chaos which, combined with the film’s considerable runtime, makes the work rather hard to digest.

Yet the deeper we wade into this bizarre vision—one that plays like the drunken dream of a screenwriter—the more it becomes saturated with subversive meaning. The onslaught of weirdness is broken up by strikingly lyrical passages that add depth and tragedy to the characters’ fates. By looping themes of lost innocence, sadism, masochism, manipulation, and nihilistic destruction, Sono tries to create in The Forest of Love a crooked mirror reflecting a universal story about youthful impulses of passion and love, susceptibility to manipulation, and the frightening ease of crossing certain boundaries under the force of emotion.

Distributing the collective protagonist across multiple characters and confronting them with the cool, scheming Mr. Murata creates space for a surprisingly serious reflection to emerge from the absurdity—albeit delivered in an extremely schizophrenic and grotesque form.

Despite genuinely brilliant moments that allow the viewer to flow with the torrent of events and give in to the film’s paradoxical atmosphere, The Forest of Love is not a fully successful work. Sono scatters the narrative building blocks too chaotically and too often gets bogged down in unnecessary repetitions, disturbing the rhythm of the story. This unfortunately weakens key motifs and, above all, causes the film to collapse under the weight of its own frenzy, drifting more toward incoherence than toward inspired derangement.

The ending disappoints as well—though nicely conceived, it is written and directed with striking banality. The glimpses of genuine depth thus turn out to be mere momentary flights, and the promise of cinematic catharsis remains unfulfilled.

In the end, The Forest of Love is a surprising, genre-defying blend of crime, comedy, psychological drama, and macabre. The Japanese film intoxicates with its bizarre expression and pulls the viewer into its peculiar logic, yet on the level of character dissection and relationships it promises more than it ultimately delivers. Sion Sono’s film is uneven, irritating, and only intermittently captivating. It’s hard to hold this against the Japanese filmmaker, though. In the aesthetic he operates in, missing the mark is easy, and the director does not seek compromise.

Thus, although The Forest of Love as a whole is ultimately disappointing, its creator deserves recognition for remaining true to his artistic identity—even when working on a project for a mainstream giant.