Love Exposure / Ai no Mukidashi / 愛のむきだし

Wow, just WOW!

I have already watched this movie way back, it came out in 2008, and speaking of which, what a year that was!! Almost every country had something. This from Japan, Miao Miao and Beautiful Crazy from Taiwan, Martyrs from France, I Can’t Think Straight and Affinity from UK, The Baby Formula from Netherlands and many many more, from evidence that was, hands down, the best year for yuri!

And so I have already seen this movie, I even wrote a blog on tumblr putting out my wish for a Blu-ray of the movie and guess what happened, we did indeed get a Blu-ray of this movie! It has been out for a while but it was a challenge to get to watch it again. I had plans of doing just that way back and with the Blu-ray, it meant a chance to enjoy it in its full quality glory! It had nothing to do with the fact that it is a 4 hour movie, no, the reason I waited was because I was dreading it. My body and mind tells me that I did not have the best experience watching it the first time, it has to do with the way things ended and now that I have re-watched it, I can understand why.

I was really pulled in by our main girls Aya (the bird-petting crazy lesbian) and Yoko. The ending disappointed me so much, especially since I was still green back then but after all the experience of BAD ENDs, it doesn’t seem so bad now. So I held off watching it again but now that I have finally been able to, man, what a roller coaster of a ride!

A warning to all green horns out there, whenever you see the signature SION SONO logo before a movie, brace yourselves! This is another one of those directors you will never forget once you see their movies! I seriously forgot how crazy this movie was! So much so that I was even surprised by some of the yuri scenes because I did not remember them at all! I am not sure if they are added scenes and this is some kind of ultimate cut of the movie, since really, I thought it was about three hours long and not four!

Yeah, this is one long movie but as far as I am concerned, directors need to do this more often! You get full back stories of all the major characters, scenes play out in their full lengths. You don’t miss anything!  But really, Japanese movies are on average 2 hours long, especially the dramatic ones so a four hour cut once in a while shouldn’t be so strange! We should be getting these instead of this new trend they have of splitting movies into parts!

Anyway, what a movie, what awesome yuri! It takes itself no so seriously but it seriously turns real life beliefs over their head like it’s nobody’s business! Our main girls were ridiculously so good in their roles, really, everyone was just so on point, despite most of them being so young!

This movie is four hours long so I am not going to be talking about everything. if you think I missed something, I know it is there but no time to mention it. it’s not that I am going to pick things from order of importance but rather what I remember on top of my head because this is a huge movie! Of course I remember all Aya/Yoko scenes so I have to leave out even those I remember…Oh the suffering, but the movie has been out for over 8 years, you should be able to get your hands on it by now so I recommend you watch it yourselves to get everything.

Alright, where to start…

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