Review of Guilty of Romance (2011) by Sherry Z — 26 Jan 2013

This movie is amazing. It describes 2 women in different stages of unfulfillment. The movie is grounded on the fact that perfect love is like a castle, surrounded by defenses and in many cases unattainable.

Izumi is a housewife who yearns for her husband's love. In the meantime, she settles for whatever semblance of love she can get: from appreciation for her execution of household chores, to satisfaction at successfully giving sausage samples at the supermarket, to random sex with strangers. As she looks for satisfaction in sex with strangers, she encounters a man/pimp who initially seems benign, but eventually scares her into acknowledging the conflict between her love for her husband and her need to cheat on him with others. Izumi is then introduced by the man to a more experienced hooker who she realizes can help her come to terms with herself.

The hooker is Mitsuko who recognizes Izumi as an earlier iteration of herself. Having been in love with her father, seduced him using his passion for literature, and lost him when he died, Mitsuko understands Izumi's hope for love and where that hope will eventually lead. To hasten Izumi to this realization, Mitsuko teaches Izumi that while searching for her true love/castle, she can have sex with others so long as she makes a distinction between love and lust by asking for money whenever she is having sex without love. Mitsuko then guides Izumi back to the pimp who integrates Izumi into his escort service.

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On Izumi's first escort job, Mitsuko goes before Izumi to prime the man for Izumi. Mitsuko recognizes the man and stays to watch Izumi's reaction to having sex with her husband. Izumi finally realizes that her castle is unattainable, her husband will never truly love her as a woman. Just like Mitsuko's father, Izumi's husband never was and never will be able to love Izumi. Mitsuko drags Izumi back to her love apartment and tells Izumi that the only way to achieve true fulfillment, reach the unreachable castle, is probably through death. Mitsuko's mother, bitter at Mitsuko's monopoly of her father's love, happened to follow Mitsuko that afternoon and sees her chance. Mitsuko's mother convinces the pimp and Izumi that the only way for Mitsuko to be relieved of her pain is through death. Izumi kills Mitsuko while the pimp watches on. This might have been Mitsuko's plan all along-- to show someone else her pain in order to force that person to direct their anger at her and kill her.

Eventually, Izumi continues on where Mitsuko left off, having unabashed sex with everyone and acting with brash self confidence, aware that no one can hurt her as much as the realization that she will never achieve her true love has hurt her. The movie ends with a scene of her getting beaten for being too aggressive towards a customer and raises the question of whether she will meet the same end as Mitsuko-- purposely aggravating someone to the point that they kill her.