Year: 2005
Duration: 108'
The ringleader of a “strange circus,” a matronly drag queen, invites a member of the audience to come up onstage to try out a guillotine. The volunteer is Mitsuko, a 12-year-old girl who says she has always known she had to die. The girl wakes up and realizes it was a dream, but it is actually the beginning of a real and much worse nightmare that involves the entire family, as well as Taeko, a paraplegic author who specializes in erotic and grotesque novels. “I have often been compared to Takashi Miike, to the point that I decided to watch his films, which were new to me. But I don’t think we have much in common. For example, it was Cronenberg who influenced my work; and David Lynch, his use of the soundtrack in Eraserhead impressed me a lot. Strange Circus is like a catalog of all my passions, a kind of treasure chest where I have put all my love for bad taste and slightly grotesque settings and characters… it’s sort of my Edogawa Ranpo-like film.”
Biography
film director
Sion Sono
Sion Sono (Toyokawa, Japan, 1961) is an internationally acclaimed Japanese filmmaker. His movies depict Japanese society in a provocative and violent way, amid a plethora of pop culture references. His most renown films include Suicide Club (2002), which is part of a trilogy on alienation along with Noriko’s Dinner Table (2005), winner of the Berliner Zeitung Jury Award, and Love Exposure (2008), winner of the FIPRESCI Award and the Caligari Film Award at the Berlinale. Love Exposure is also the first film of the “trilogy of hate,” which includes Cold Fish (2010) and Guilty of Romance (2011). He participated to the Venice Film Festival in 2011 with the feature Himizu, and in 2013 with Why Don’t You Play in Hell. The Torino Film Festival paid tribute to him with a retrospective in 2011. He participated in several TFF editions with his films Tokyo Tribe (2014), Love & Peace (2015), TAG (2015) and Shinjuku Swan (2015).
FILMOGRAFIA
The Room (1992), Suicide Club (2002), Noriko’s Dinner Table (2005), Strange Circus (2005), Hazard (2006), Exte: Hair Extensions (2007), Love Exposure (2008), Cold Fish (2010), Guilty of Romance (2011), Himizu (2011), Why Don’t You Play in Hell (2013), Tokyo Tribe (2014), Love & Peace (2015), Riaru onigokko (TAG, 2015), Shinjuku suwan (Shinjuku Swan, 2015), Antiporno (2016), Tokyo Vampire Hotel (serie tv/tv series, 2017).
Cast
& Credits
regia, soggetto, sceneggiatura, musica/director, story, screenplay, music
Sion Sono
fotografia/cinematography
Otsuka Yuichir?
montaggio/film editing
Ito Jun’ichi
costumi/costume design
Matsumoto Keiko
interpreti e personaggi/cast and characters
Miyazaki Masumi (Mitsuko/Sayuri/Taeko), Ishida Issei (Y?ji), Ooguchi Hiroshi (Gozo), Kuwana Rie (Mitsuko bambina/as a Child), Takahashi Mai (Mitsuko ragazza/as a Girl), Taguchi Tomorowo (l’editore di Taeko/Taeko’s Publisher), Madame Rejine
produttori/producers
Hoshino K?ji, Nakazawa Toshiaki, Sat? Toshihiro, Tomida Toshie
produzione, vendita all’estero /production, world sales
Sedic International
