Strange Circus

Strange Circus
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Sion Sono
Written by	Sion Sono
Produced by
Starring	Masumi Miyazaki Issei Ishida
Cinematography	Yuichiro Otsuka
Edited by	Junichi Ito
Music by	Sion Sono
Release date	December 24, 2005 (2005-12-24)
Running time	108 minutes
Language	Japanese

Strange Circus (奇妙なサーカス, Kimyō na sākasu) is a 2005 Japanese horror drama film written and directed by Sion Sono.

A narrated fiction presents the story of school principal Ozawa Gozo rapes his daughter, Mitsuko, after she sees her parents having sex. Her mother Sayuri witnesses the rape. Gozo now rapes both of them as he pleases, while his family is undermined by incest, suicide, and murder. This is the erotic novel that writer Taeko, who uses a wheelchair, sets out to write. She is assisted by Yuji, a young man who is actually on a mission to uncover the reality of this story of Taeko's past, and of the locked room in her apartment. But the reality and truth beneath the Grand Guignol nightmares that Taeko creates might be too much to bear.

Plot[]

Starting with a tour of the titular Strange Circus, we see the start of a burlesque performance featuring many over the top characters. The MC brings out a guillotine and offers the strange array of characters a chance to die on stage, before addressing the camera and bringing a young girl on stage. The girl states that she has always been on the execution stand, if not for her, then for her mother.

We are then introduced to Mitsuko, a twelve year old girl whose father is the sexually deviant principal of her school. After noticing that Mitsuko had seen her parents having sex, Gozo summons her to his office at school, where he is projecting sexually explicit material on the far wall the entire time. Mitsuko is told to look at it. Gozo convinces Mitsuko to climb into a cello case with a peephole as a game, then proceeds to have sex with Sayuri without her knowing her daughter is watching in the cello case. This adds to Mitsuko's confusion, studying her mother as she is forced to watch this display. Shortly after, Gozo proceeds to rape Mitsuko, which is discovered by Sayuri when she returns home. Afterward, we see Gozo having sex with Sayuri, with Mitsuko still watching in the cello case. Gozo then reveals to Sayuri that Mitsuko has been watching for a long time. He then coerces Sayuri into the cello case to watch him rape her daughter.

All the while, Mitsuko is having issues separating her identity from her mother. Because she is forced to both have sex with Gozo and watch her mother having sex with him, she begins to disassociate and takes on the role of her mother. Unfortunately, as a result of the infidelity, rape, and incest, Sayuri becomes abusive anytime she is alone with Mitsuko. During one violent encounter involving a missing earring, Sayuri chases Mitsuko through the house, up the stairs, only for Mitsuko to kick her and knock her down the stairs. Sayuri apologizes, but ultimately dies from the fall. Alone with her incestuous father, Mitsuko takes on the identity of the 35-year-old Sayuri, going to school and having sex with her father as Sayuri would have, despite Gozo's initial confusion.

After having another breakdown, Mitsuko attempts suicide by throwing herself off a ledge. Unfortunately for her, she survives the fall and instead is relegated to a wheelchair. Gozo tells Mitsuko that she needs to keep their little secret, and presents her suicide attempt as his tragedy, something that can be avoided if you check on other people as a decent human would.

We are then pulled out of that story, instead learning that this entire scenario is being written by a reclusive, wheel-chair bound writer, Taeko. While she is dismissive of her chief editor, she takes a keen interest in the new assistant, Yûji Tamiya, asking him to read the story so far, one of her many stories exclusively about Mitsuko. She is keenly protective over a red door in her studio, not allowing anyone to enter. She asks Yûji to take her on a walk, despite using a wheelchair, which he exhaustively takes her across the city, up stairs, onto a train, and up to a hill in Aobadai. There, she dismisses him and wheels herself up a hill, only to climb out of the wheelchair, collapse it, and walk away with it in tow. When she returns home, she enters the red room and we find that it is completely filthy with a cello case at its center that she talks to. She then adopts a disguise, goes out shopping and sees some girls gossiping about her while reading her books. She interjects, just to drive them away.

Afterward, Taeko's Editor tells Yûji that Taeko is faking her paralysis, and asks him to spy on Taeko so they could have a good scoop for their magazine. Yûji agrees.

Now disabled, Mitsuko is having trouble adjusting to life in a wheelchair. She is ignored by her classmates, even when she goes out of her way to trip a classmate trying to catch a soccer ball. Gozo also neglects her, in favor of having sex with various women he keeps around the house. When she's ignored when she asks for help to go to the bathroom, she grabs a butcher knife and begins to stab her legs until Gozo notices and takes it away from her.

Inside Mitsuko's red room, she is sloppily eating spaghetti while writing her novel on top of the cello case. She forces food into the hole, before celebrating the completion of her novel by throwing it into the air, letting it scatter amidst all the trash in the room.

Yûji receives a call from the editor, who tries to apologize for asking him to be so deceitful, but when Yûji says he'll do it, the editor is more than happy to ablige. We see that Yûji has a giant mural to Taeko. We then see him at a body modification support group, where he reveals to the group, though not to us, some surgery he had to "be a vase that compliments the flowers [that reflect his soul]."

Mitsuko awakens, only to find herself bandaged. She crawls through the house, only to continue to be ignored, and manages to find her mother's lost earring - the one that caused her death - while she is lapping up milk from the tile floor. One of Gozo's women take the earring, and, despite Mitsuko's pleading, refuses to give it back and swallows it instead, causing Mitsuko to have another breakdown. Due to this, Gozo ends up storing her in the cello case once again.

Taeko celebrates finishing her novel by presenting it to Yûji, then taking a trip to the beach with him. While on the train ride, they spot someone with a cello case and she comments on it. Yûji reveals he was told that being raped was akin to being only a torso. He offers the suggestion to turn both Mitsuko and Gozo into torsos at the end of the novel. Taeko loves the idea.

We are then in the point of view of Sayuri bound and gagged inside the cello case that Taeko and Yûji spotted on the train earlier.

Taeko wakes up in a hotel room with Yûji, unable to remember how she got there. When they go for a walk, Taeko spots a bathing suit and asks Yûji to buy it for her. While he's inside the shop, the man with the cello case from the train approaches her and she starts screaming. Yûji manages to get him to leave. Once again in the hotel room, Taeko asks Yûji to put the bathing suit on her, citing his infamous lack of libido as why she feels safe asking him to do this. Afterward, she is put to bed by Yûji and she dreams of the Strange Circus, with a nude, bloodied Sayuri laying in the center of the room.

When she wakes up, she notices that she had a nosebleed. She finds Yûji asleep on the bed, and decides to get up and sneak into the bathroom to clean herself up. While she's doing that, Yûji wakes up and sneaks a page of her manuscript into her purse. He manages to get back into position, feigning sleep, right before she reenters the room. She climbs back into bed and wakes up Yûji, with both pretending to just wake up, and asks to be taken home.

In the red room, she "serves dinner" to the cello case while chatting about her new book. She receives a call from Yûji who tells her that a page of her manuscript is missing and he needs it tonight for the editor. She rushes out with the page, only for it to be revealed that Yûji has been waiting outside her studio. He enters the red room, finding the cello case, and addresses it with familiarity. Taeko, however, shows up in Aobadai, pulls out her wheelchair and makes her way to the hill. She receives a call from Yûji, who says he's with her "pet" and tells her to return to her childhood home. She returns to the red room to find the cello case empty.

Taeko arrives at the house we saw Mitsuko grow up in, still toting her wheelchair with her in attempt to keep up the ruse. When Yûji appears, he dumps her out of the wheelchair, though she still acts like she is paralyzed. He challenges her memory and she deduces she was Mitsuko, despite never quite being sure. When he refers to her as "Mother" she can't quite understand what is going on. He helps her back into the wheelchair before taking her upstairs to Gozo's bedroom, where they find Gozo as nothing more than a bloody torso, though he is still very much alive, bound in chains. Yûji has set up a table for Taeko to write, but, through critiquing the writing as an editor would, we realize that Taeko is not Mitsuko, but Sayuri, still alive after all these years.

In a recontextualization of the opening story, we learn that this was Sayuri's way of justifying what was done to Mitsuko, that she had to enjoy it and become her, but in fact it was a horrible experience for Mitsuko on every level. While explaining this, Yûji reveals his body modification, intense scarification where his breasts used to be. It's then revealed that it was Mitsuko who was thrown down the stairs, not Sayuri. However, Mitsuko survived. She was pulled out of the abusive household and put into foster care. Mitsuko tried to return, only to find that Sayuri could not cope with how terrible of a person she was, and instead had escaped into the persona of Mitsuko, including going to school and having sex with Gozo, both dressed as and addressing herself as Mitsuko. Instead of being paralyzed herself, Sayuri shoved Gozo down the stairs after coming face-to-face with his harem, leaving him completely broken. After she finished her first novel, she took the name Taeko and stole his wheelchair, instead storing him in the cello case he was so fond of using.

All this breaks modern day Taeko, and she starts laughing and crying simultaneously. Yûji appears to forgive Taeko, allowing her to become Sayuri again, only for Yûji to grab a chainsaw to turn her into a torso like Mitsuko did to Gozo.

Taeko then wakes up screaming in the hotel room with Yûji, from before she had the dream of Sayuri inside the cello case on the train. Her screaming wakes up Yûji, but, when she asks for her wheelchair, he has no idea what she is talking about. She finally stands up in front of him, but he insists that she has always walked on her own feet. When she questions that, she awakens on the bed next to Gozo, chained up, with Yûji standing over her with the chainsaw going. Laughing and screaming, he says, "Now, which one is the dream?"

We end back at the Strange Circus. The MC thanks everyone for being there with them and presents Sayuri with her head in the guillotine. Everyone claps for her. The MC rips off their face to reveal its Gozo leading the performance, and we see the various characters, including Taeko's editor, his brothers, teen Mitsuko, Gozo's lovers, and finally young Mitsuko and Yûji, who give her a standing ovation. Gozo wishes her well, and the guillotine drops.

Cast[]

• Masumi Miyazaki as Sayuri / Taeko
• Issei Ishida as Yûji Tamiya
• as Young Mitsuko
• Mai Takahashi as Young Mitsuko
• Fujiko
• Tomorowo Taguchi as Taeko's Editor
• as Gozo

Reception[]

Russell Edwards of Variety wrote that the film "shocks, provokes but ultimately bores with its tasteless indulgences" and that it "will be most at home at midnight fest sidebars, or anywhere else where a trash aesthetic is embraced."^[1]

References[]

External links[]

• Strange Circus at IMDb

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