Fantasia Report: Big Bang Love, Juvenile A Review

Ryuhei Matsuda and Masanobu Ando star as two young men imprisoned for a pair of unrelated murders on the very same day. But while their crimes and punishments match the two men couldn't be any more different, Matsuda's Jun a meekly asexual gay bar employee who went into a bloody frenzy following a sexual assault while Ando's Shiro is a hyper aggressive, hyper tattooed repeat offender who would rather talk with his fists than his tongue. They seem an unlikely pair but Jun seems to be the only inmate Shiro will even tolerate, the strong fighter frequently rising unbidden to his quiet companion's defense. How then to explain it when Jun is discovered throttling Shiro's still-warm corpse?

From the very opening shot, a clapboard clacking down to mark the start of a scene, Miike makes it clear that Big Bang Love will be a heavily artificial film. With its ultra-spare sets and dramatic lighting design comparisons to Von Trier's Dogville and Manderlay are inevitable but while the Dane stripped thing back in an effort to create a higher degree of intimacy and naturalism Miike is going for precisely the opposite effect, aiming for something highly theatrical and entirely artificial and creating an abstract language to address the never changing hostility of man against man. Spoken narration, experimental dance, recitations of poetry, extreme color saturation, they are all tools in the palette Miike employs to create a thoroughly deconstructed, sci-fi tinted noir murder mystery.

Much like IZO, Big Bang Love is a film certain to sharply divide audiences. Unusual it certainly is but it is not at all the piece of shock transgression that Ichi the Killer is, say, and it has no desire to be. Miike is showing an interest in exploring art house sensibilities and while the art house Miike certainly makes for compelling viewing it will, no doubt, leave a good many of his old fans either confused or bored. And, unfortuanately, it is precisely his well earned transgressive reputation that will prevent this film from being widely seen by those with more typical art house leanings. But whether it finds an audience or not Big Bang Love shows a steady progression from one of the most fascinating film makers working today, an artist finding a dveloping yet another distinct voice at a furious pace.