Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Forest of Love’ on Netflix, a Wild, Uncategorizable Film from Japanese Provocateur Sion Sono

Netflix’s The Forest of Love arrives steaming-hot from the What the Hell Did I Just Watch file — and what the hell I just watched is a film by Sion Sono, who’s considered a provocateur and rebel of Japanese cinema, with a taste for taboos, violence and general subversiveness. It doesn’t disappoint on those fronts, the director delivering a two-and-a-half-hour wild epic that brazenly challenges its “inspired by true events” title card with every passing moment. His first effort for the streaming service likely grants him his widest potential audience yet, while also freeing him from the restraints of commercial theatrical filmmaking.

THE FOREST OF LOVE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Tokyo. Joe Murata (Kippei Shiina) sits in a restaurant. A television report details the latest misdeeds of a serial killer. Murata carries an all-girls school yearbook with numerous photos crossed out. He tells the waiter he’s a screenwriter, and asks if he knows what it’s like to kill someone. The waiter, being a conscionable human being, isn’t sure how to reply.

On the street, a dorky busker, Shin (Shinnosuke Mitsushima), meets two young, gregarious would-be filmmakers, Jay and Fukami (Young Dais and Dai Hasegawa), who dream of being the next Coen Brothers. In hopes of relieving Shin of his virginity, they visit Taeko (Kyooko Hinami), who suggests pairing him with her old friend Mitsuko (Eri Kamataki), a recluse living with her strict, rich parents. A decade earlier, Taeko and Mitsuko attended an all-girls high school, where their lesbian production of Romeo and Juliet never happened after their “Romeo” (Yuzuku Nakaya) died suddenly. Mitsuko loved “Romeo,” and built a shrine of stuffies and dolls in her honor; sometimes, Mitsuko puts her hand down her pants when she sees the ghost of her dead lover, lounging seductively in her underwear.

Mitsuko’s phone rings. It’s Murata. He has a flimsy excuse to meet her — he wants to return a 50 yen coin he says she once gave him. She doesn’t remember the incident at all. “For me, it was 500 million,” he says. He’s persuasive, kind of charming. Being a bit of a naif, she obliges. They meet at the park, where Taeko and the three would-be Coens spot her. Taeko recognizes Murata as the same guy who seduced her. And her sister. And her mom. He’s trouble. The guys decide to make a movie about him, which is surely their ticket to film-festival glory and careers as superstar directors.

Soon enough, Murata inspires Mitsuko to come out of her shell. He’s also producing the movie project. He’s weaselly like that — seductive, fast-talking, inspiring a cult of personality, worming into their skulls and engineering the locomotive before anyone really notices he’s bent on taking control. Most everyone in his sphere gets caught up in his corruptive insanity, and it seems like only a matter of time until everything jumps the rails and gets feral. What’s up with Murata? Does he feed on human vulnerability? Is he an agent of chaos? And is he the serial killer or what?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Sono’s style brings to mind the freewheeling disposition of films by John Cassavetes (Husbands, A Woman Under the Influence) or Harmony Korine (Spring Breakers, The Beach Bum), with a little bit of the untamed spirit of Werner Herzog’s Stroszek or Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. These are not comparisons I make lightly. Sono is here to challenge us.

Performance Worth Watching: Hinami’s characterization of Taeko is the film’s emotional focal point. Her psychology is fraught and complex, and we always sense Taeko’s reluctance to participate in the group’s increasingly deranged antics. The performance suggests she’ll never shake the trauma of past experiences.

Memorable Dialogue: “Create a scar and move forward” is Taeko’s wise advice for Mitsuko.

Sex and Skin: Tons of it. Although very little of it is particularly sexy.

Our Take: To say The Forest of Love jumps the rails is to imply it was ever on the rails in the first place. Are there even rails in Sono’s vision for the film? At first, maybe, yes, but in retrospect, after enduring/enjoying all two-and-a-half hours of it, probably not. Narrative focus clearly isn’t his concern. Right off the bat, we get a scene, followed by a title card: PROLOGUE, it reads, implying that what we just saw was a pre-prologue. Thirteen minutes later, we get the actual title card, followed by six clearly labeled chapters that jump around between 1985, 1992 and the story’s present, which, from what I can determine via the presentation of cellular telephone technology, must be the mid-’90s.

Tight, the film is not. It’s a smeary thing that doesn’t find a groove until the halfway point, but it’s admirable in the way Sono emphasizes intuition over structure. Even when it’s unfocused and rambling, it feels warm, alive, coursing with hot blood that boils over many times, in shockingly sadistic and borderline-traumatic depictions of hyper-realistic gore and torture. (Turns out, Murata is quite fond of zapping his lovers and minions with electrified rods.)

Sono nurtures fascinating character dynamics throughout: The promiscuous, extroverted Taeko and the mousy, tragically introverted Mitsuko are clearly clouded with despair in the wake of their high school experiences (one of which is the movie’s most unforgettable sequence, best left unspoiled here). The filmmaker men are ambitious and hungry, driven by creativity, hopeful for the future. All are susceptible to Maruta’s persuasive tactics — which is a nice way of saying they succumb to his noxious bullying. Even Mitsuko’s buttoned-up parents eventually crumble to Maruta’s deranged influence. He’s like a parasite who consumes minds slowly, quietly and persistently, until the victim has no will of their own. Why do they not push back? What compels him to exert his power over others? I don’t think Sono intends to answer these questions.

Our Call: STREAM IT. It’s not perfect, but neither is it forgettable. Be warned, though — The Forest of Love is not for the weak of heart.

Your Call:

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream The Forest of Love on Netflix