The Forest of Love (2019)

• Year: 2019
• Released: 11 Oct 2019
• Country: Japan, United States
• Adwords: N/A
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10589914/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_forest_of_love
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: Japanese, English
• MPA Rating: TV-MA
• Genre: Crime, Drama, Horror
• Runtime: 151 min
• Writer: Sion Sono
• Director: Sion Sono
• Cast: Kippei Shîna, Shinnosuke Mitsushima, Kyoko Hinami
• Keywords: smoking, trauma, forest, supernatural, based on true story, torture,

	6.3/10
	100% – Critics
	60% – Audience

The Forest of Love Storyline

Joe Murata (Kippei Shiina) sits in a restaurant as the misdeeds of a serial killer are reported on TV. Murata carries a yearbook from a girls’ school, 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.Two young men, Jay and Fukami, meet another young man, Shin, and take him to the vacant warehouse where they’re living. Jay says he wants to make movies to explore all kinds of criminal behavior legally. When Shin reveals he’s a virgin, Jay takes him to meet a promiscuous girl. The girl, Taeko, refuses Shin but introduces him to her high school classmate, Mitsuko, a shut-in with well-off but strict parents. Mitsuko says she is also a virgin but isn’t interested in Shin. Taeko argues she should “make some scars and move on”.When Mitsuko and Taeko were in high school, their class worked on a production of Romeo and Juliet for the school festival. Mitsuko was to play Juliet, with Eiko as Romeo. With little experience with boys at their all-girls school, they explore sexuality and romance among themselves. Eiko is killed in a car accident, and the play is cancelled. Five of the girls decide to take sleep medication and stand on the edge of the school roof. Taeko vows to become a “slut” if she survives. Mitsuko sees a vision of Eiko and does not fall, while the others fall. Taeko lands on a parked car and is left with a limp and a scar. She gets “Romeo” tattooed on the scar.In the present, Mitsuko receives a call from Murata, who claims she had lent him 50 yen years ago. He claims he is now successful and wants to return the money. They meet at a park, where Murata arrives in a sports car and expresses attraction to her. Shin, Jay, and Fukami watch and record this. Mitsuko watches the video with Taeko and says she recognizes Murata as a con artist who had claimed to want to marry her sister. Taeko recalls sleeping with Murata and seeing him seduce her mother. The young men obtain a filming crew and begin making a film about Murata’s cons, with Shin as Murata.Meanwhile, Murata seduces Mitsuko, her younger sister, Ami, and Taeko. He stages a concert, where many of his former victims show up to compete for his affections. The three filmmakers, Mitsuko, and Taeko meet up with him afterwards. Mitsuko reveals she is sleeping with Murata and shows them the burns and scars he left on her. Murata lifts Taeko’s shirt to reveal more of the same. Murata says he can help with their movie, as he is wealthy. Fukami quits and leaves. The others accept.It is revealed Murata has no money. The film crew quits, leaving Jay, Shin, Taeko, and Mitsuko on the project. Murata takes over the film and revels in cruelty to them. Mitsuko says she is pregnant with his child. Murata takes them to a country house and coaches Mitsuko in a scene where she strangles Jay. Jay dies. Murata convinces them to destroy and dump Jay’s remains in the lake. Taeko jumps from the boat to escape but is killed by an unknown gunman.They go to Mitsuko’s home, where Murata uses Mitsuko’s involvement in Jay’s death to blackmail her parents, torturing them on camera. He tells them to get a relative to fund the film. Ami enjoys his torture of her parents and Mitsuko. Mitsuko attempts suicide after watching Ami have sex with Murata. Murata, Ami, and Shin decide “tomorrow will be Mitsuko’s death scene”. Mitsuko and Ami go dress shopping for the scene, and Ami thwarts her attempt to escape. Mitsuko has a miscarriage and is hospitalized.The relative discovers the film company is a sham and arrives to demand his money back. Inside the house, he encounters Mitsuko’s drunk, raving parents. Murata and Shin return to find Mitsuko’s father has hung himself. Her mother and relative lie on the floor with a bloody knife nearby. Ami returns home to find Murata and Shin have dismembered the relative. She decapitates her father and discovers her mother is alive. At her mother’s request, Ami kills her.Murata, Shin, and Ami take Mitsuko to a forest, where she agrees to be killed. She explains she had not taken the sleep medication and had hoped Taeko would die, that she had sex with her friends’ boyfriends as well as Ami’s. She had known Murata was a con artist and Shin was a killer but hoped they would kill Ami, her parents, and Taeko.Shin shoots Ami and Mitsuko, then gives the gun to Murata and orders him to kill Ami, who is begging Murata for her life. Shin berates Murata then kills Ami himself. He reveals himself to be the serial killer reported on the news. They fight, and Murata escapes and waves down a car driven by a woman who resembles Eiko. When asked where she is heading, she answers, “To hell.” Shin takes the car they came in and gives a lift to a woman with car troubles. He sees Eiko by the side of the road, stops, and runs into the forest after her.The on-screen text states that those behind the murders that inspired the film were caught in 2002 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

The Forest of Love Photos

The Forest of Love Torrents Download

The Forest of Love Subtitles Download

The Forest of Love Movie Reviews

It’s Sion Sono’s World, We’re Just Living In It.

Sion Sono is a director whom I respect immensely. Much like Takashi Miike, Sono is incredibly prolific, and his films, even when they aren’t great, are always incredibly entertaining. Both Sono and Miike’s films run the gamut as far as genre- they flit back and forth easily from mystery/thrillers (Sono- “Suicide Club”, Miike- “Ichi the Killer”) to sci-fi (Sono- “Tag”, Miike- “As the Gods Will”) to horror (Sono- “Cold Fish”, Miike- “Audition”) to comedy (Sono- “Love, Exposure”, Miike- “The Happiness of the Katakuris”) and every genre in between. While I really enjoy films from both directors, recently, it’s been Sono’s work that I’ve been most drawn to. Sono’s films are bizarre, violent, and sometimes hilarious dips into cinema, and every time I watch one of his films I honestly can’t predict what will happen next.

“The Forest of Love” is based on a (somewhat) true story. I say somewhat because the events that are depicted in this film did happen, but not in the totally bonkers way they are portrayed here. Sono stylizes his violence as much as Tarantino does in “Kill Bill Vol 1”, and while there might not as high of a body count, the amount of gore that Sono gleefully throws at the viewer makes it difficult to think of the victims as… well, victims. The way Sono kills people off in this film feels as if it would be far more at home in a Dario Argento giallo film (“Deep Red” or “Tenebre”) than it does in a biopic about a cult of personality gone awry. I had to keep reminding myself that these were real people, and some of the events they went through were incredibly disturbing. In a way, it’s weird to watch this film when it clearly finds joy in depicting some of the more graphic details of this murder spree. Usually, films that depict horrific events like this do so with a bit of reverence for the victims, and this film is anything but reverent, and that tone takes a bit of getting used to.

Looking back to earlier work

THE FOREST OF LOVE is the latest offering from Japanese director Sion Sono, who seems to be up there with Takashi Miike in producing completely offbeat and unpredictable movies. This one’s diluted somewhat, a film which feels less original than the director’s previous output; it doesn’t help that many key scenes seem to be copied from earlier movies like SUICIDE CLUB and COLD FISH. In many ways this makes THE FOREST OF LOVE feel more like a ‘greatest hits’ compilation than a proper movie. It’s certainly disjointed, starting out as one kind of film before turning into another completely, and there’s a disparate array of characterisation, torture, voyeurism, gore, romance, betrayal and flawed psychology. The characters are quite repulsive but Sono’s flamboyant and energetic style goes some way towards making this viewable.

Sono’s ‘Greatest Hits’ compilation/medley for the Netflix-generation wider audience.

This film is like a sort of Sion Sono starter pack for a generation that hasn’t grown up watching his output from 2000-2015. Its characters, situations, premises, visual motifs, even locations are all taken from films (some, not all – since Sono has also made films outside his regular violent, emotive, hyperactive, bat-crazy signature fares) from this era: Noriko’s Dinner Table, Strange Circus, Love Exposure, Cold Fish, Guilty of Romance and Why Dont You Play in Hell to be precise. These six films, along with minor references to his other films, form of the universe of “The Forest of Love”. Its characters fluidly pass from one film to the other. And together they establish the ethos that is a standard Sono film. In the hands of any other director this idea would appear too self-indulgent to execute. But Sono introduces a self-conscious metaphysical angle that tries to posit all the violence and insanity and torture as services to cinema, or his kind of cinema. “Jinsei wa Eiga!”- its characters proclaim not-so-subtly.

With a premise that is interesting enough to get his fans and newer audience hooked right from the start (no matter what follows afterwards), this film has a lot of memorable moments to offer. But sadly, for a fan, there’s nothing essentially new. We have all seen this before, done better. The six films I mentioned – each of them are brilliant in their own ways because they exhaust their respective ideas both philosophically and in craft. In comparison, this appears little more than a list of checked boxes, like an already-established band playing their greatest hits on an overseas stage, rather than a new album.

6.5/10