Line #45 Film/GuiltyOfRomance


1	[[quoteright:212:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gof_2.png]]
2	[[caption-width-right:212:It's Sono. You know it's going to be creepy.]]
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4	''Guilty of Romance'' is a Japanese erotic thriller by Creator/SionSono, released in 2011.
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6	The narration begins as a brutal murder case in Shibuya, Tokyo (a love hotel district) leaves many questions unanswered. Since the corpse is mutilated beyond recognition (other than it being female), the police can only work off a list of women missing. With this the story takes a turn and centers on the [[HowWeGotHere backstory of one of the women missing]]. Her name is Izumi and she is the wife of a well-known writer of naive romantic novels. Her daily life is dictated by [[CreepyCleanliness his well-mannered life style]]. Things change when she is called to a model agency, making her find new respect for her body and starting to use it to seduce men, being unfaithful to her husband. Her journey of self-discovery soon leads her into Shibuya where she makes the acquaintance of the prostitute Mitsuko [[LivingADoubleLife who works as a professor at a university in the daytime]]. Izumi is fascinated by her and follows her through the streets of the district, which is the beginning of a downward spiral without turning back.
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8	!!''Guilty of Romance'' contains examples of the following tropes:
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10	* AbusiveParents: Mitsuko’s mother wishes her dead and even tries to kill her.
11	* AllWomenAreLustful: Izumi, Mitsuko, and also Kazuko in the director’s cut are depicted as lustful. It’s not like the male characters are any better though.
12	* AnachronicOrder: The narration of Kazuko’s investigations takes place after the story of Izumi, though both of them are told simultaneously.
13	%% * AntiVillain: Mitsuko, in some ways.
14	%% * ArcWords: "I should have never learned words."
15	* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler: The pimp meets his gruesome end by the hands of Mitsuko’s mother.]]
16	* AuthorAppeal: Sono seems to like the name [[Film/SuicideClub Mi]][[Film/StrangeCircus ts]][[Film/ColdFish uk]][[Film/WhyDontYouPlayInHell o]] a lot.
17	* BeneathTheMask: [[spoiler: Izumi’s husband is described by her as „pure“, while in reality, he has been a customer of Mitsuko for years. Making out with her is even his way of getting new ideas for his kitchy romance stories.]]
18	* CallBack: The end of the director’s cut is a call-back to [[spoiler: a scene where Kazuko’s being told of an incident of a woman who followed a garbage truck into the district of Shibuya]].
19	%% * CharacterDevelopment: Kind of a depressing one, even though Izumi herself is experiencing the development as a positive one during the first half of the movie.
20	%% * CloudCuckoolander: Izumi’s husband is shown as this with his innocent romance novels.
21	%% * CrapsackWorld: As in many other works of Sono.
22	%% * DealWithTheDevil: Not in a literal sense, but the relationship between Izumi and Mitsuko can be seen as this.
23	%% * TheDragon: The pimp, in a way, assuming Mitsuko is the BigBad.
24	%% * DownerEnding
25	%% * EvilMentor: Mitsuko to Izumi.
26	* FanService: Particularly the beginning of the director’s cut.
27	* FanDisservice: There’s a LOT of this in the movie.
28	* [[FeTish Fetish]]: The pimp seems to have one for exploding pink water ballons.
29	* ForegoneConclusion: [[spoiler: Subverted. Most people will assume that Izumi is the woman that was murdered, when later it is revealed that it is acutally Mitsuko who has been strangled by Izumi.]]
30	* HowWeGotHere: The story of Izumi serves as this for Kazuko’s murder investigations.
31	* HumansAreBastards: Invoked by the depiction of Mitsuko’s customers in particular, since all of them seem to be overly lustful and violent.
32	%% * JerkAss: [[spoiler: Izumi’s husband at the end.]]
33	%% * LadyInRed: Mitsuko.
34	* LivingADoubleLife: Mitsuko is a case of NaughtyByNight with Izumi following her example as the story proceeds.
35	* OffingTheOffspring: Mitsuko’s mother tries to kill her in one scene. Mitsuko reacts by [[TemptingFate provoking her to do it]]. [[spoiler: After Mitsuko is killed by Izumi, her mother dismembers her body]].
36	* OnlySaneMan: Kazuko’s husband seems to be this in the director’s cut.
37	* RedLightDistrict: The story centers around the red light district Shibuya in Tokyo.
38	%% * SanitySlippage: Basically the whole movie, climaxing in a very insane finale.
39	* SecretSexWorker: Mitsuko is a professor at a university during the day and a prostitute by night. She's managed to keep her prostitution so secret that it is only discovered during the police investigation about a brutal murder in a RedLightDistrict of Shibuya that is the main framing device of the film.
40	* SexIsEvil: Mitsuko’s mother seems to think this. [[spoiler: She doesn’t seem to mind murder and dismemberment though.]]
41	%% * ShoutOut: ''The Castle'' by Creator/FranzKafka.
42	* SpiritualSuccessor: To ''Film/ColdFish''. Both tell basically similar stories. ''Cold Fish''’s protagonists are male instead of female though, and it also focuses more on violence than on sexuality (even though both are important in both movies).
43	* ReCut: There is a director’s cut that is half an hour longer than the international version. It digs deeper into the character of detective Kazuko.
44	* TheReveal: [[spoiler: Izumi’s husband’s relationship to Mitsuko. Made even more vicious by Mitsuko having been aware of it all the time.]]

Context Film / GuiltyOfRomance