Kimyô na sâkasu (Strange Circus) poster & wallpaper

Fujiko, Hiroshi Ohguchi, Issei Ishida

The erotic novelist Taeko is writing a morbid story of a family destroyed by incest, murder and abuse. Her assistant, Yuji, sets on a mission to uncover the reality of this story, but the reality migh...( read more  read more... )t be too much to bear.

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83% liked it

851 ratings

Unrated, 108 min.

Directed by: Sion Sono

Release Date: October 14, 2005

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DVD Release Date: March 6, 2007

Stats: 134 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (134)

  • kiriyamakazou
    July 21, 2009
    kiriyamakazou
    In the style of his previous effort, Suicide Circle, Sion Sono deals with a difficult and dark subject in a horrific and slightly perverse way. He handles the scenes of child abuse with a twisted sense of genius. Our protagonist says how when she is abused she "becomes" her mothe...( read more)r. In the visual medium of film, this literally happens. Although this makes it possible for us to endure, the performances never allow us to forget who the character is meant to be. The plot soon starts to become even more twisted as it is not clear what is real, what is part of a novel and so on. There are dream sequences, memories and prose all tangling together to make a very unique narrative. At the end it all goes a bit too far and is bogged down by excessive exposition (I didn't need the dialogue, the unbuttoning of the shirt was enough to put the pieces together). The music is also fantastic, bridging the gap between Fargo's magnificent theme and the music of Amelie. It's certainly a difficult watch, but a rewarding one.
  • ceWEBrity
    September 27, 2008
    ceWEBrity
    Many call Suicide Club Sion Sono's finest film, and you'd be hard-pressed to argue that it had a lot of great qualities. But for all its imagination, it was incoherent and the only thing that really left any impact was the filming. Strange Circus, on the other hand, is the produc...( read more)t of a filmmaker who has matured and found focus, a wonderfully honed work that manages to be complex without purposeful obfuscation. It treads an interesting line between bizarre exploitation flick and schizophrenic, tormented narrative, and is one of the more unique films I've seen recently.

    The first half hour of the film really gets you in the gut. Basically, it's about a young girl named Mitsuko who is forced to watch her parents have sex, raped repeatedly by her father who is ALSO the principal of her school, then chased and beaten by her gradually maddening mother every day to the point where Mitsuko tries to attempt suicide. And most of you have probably stopped reading by now.

    This all is horrifically lurid, but it turns out to be the creation of a writer named Taeko, a paraplegic nymphomaniac who refuses to appear in public. It's through this that Sion Sono finds his justification for doing all these horrible things to a young girl - the implication is that, despite being a work of fiction, this all happened to Taeko - but it's still uncomfortable to sit through and that's one of my problems with the film. Kudos to the young actress, who can't have had much fun on this shoot.

    Anyway, the fact that Taeko is writing this way over-the-top depiction of household abuse lets Sono get away with all sorts of fun stuff. There's this ridiculously bad circus metaphor running through the whole movie, and we get to see a variety of fun-house freaks parading around in Mitsuko's psyche. There are really ribald, decidedly unsexy depictions of sex, all sorts of self-mutilation hijinks, and even chainsaw dismemberments. It's basically Suicide Club firing on all cylinders, four parts art and two parts badness.

    This all is amplified by Masumi Miyazaki, who plays both Mitsuko's mother Sayuri and Taeko. It is an absolutely beyond-the-call performance. There are so many emotions she has to express, so much to keep her head above, and she does it all perfectly. She knows when to play it straight and when to take it into Camp Land, but most effectively, she knows how to blur the line between the two, which allows for all sorts of reinterpretation and theorizing. She simply makes the movie. I was a little skeptical of her performance at first because it's in a different language, but next to Issei Ishida, who plays the assistant editor and body artist assigned to find the truth about Taeko, she's still fantastic. On the other hand, his acclimation to the insane final act is a lot less difficult to believe.

    The ending, on that note, is a little long-winded, but there's so much room for richness and speculation. Unlike Suicide Club, this movie actually lends itself to rational thought, instead of throwing things that seem artistic and meaningful at the viewer and letting them cobble something stupid together. Or maybe I'm just reading into this much more than I did Suicide Club. Goddamn it, Sono, the things you're doing to me.
  • sephira081277
    September 1, 2009
    sephira081277
    about a little girl molested by her dad at 12 yrs old after stumbling into one of her parents' lovemaking sessions.Sexually abused by her father and later hated by her mother, she cuts off her breasts and became a asexual guy who later became in her mother's employ in order to ex...( read more)act revenge for all the wrongs done to her. the deranged mother is a novelist who writes sexual novel from the point of view of her abused little girl. The father is chopped of his liimbs and locked by the mother in a cello case as a pet. Another grisly ending, of the mother becoming mutilated by the "girl" using a electric chainsaw. Gripping tale but overall the director trying to do too much in one film, some parts may seem abit out at first but those who are confused will reach a conclusion finally at the end.
  • zombiezimmer
    July 24, 2009
    zombiezimmer
    Very disturbing. This film's story, the twists, and the scenery can give you feelings of being traumatized. It loses one star because
  • iamthethinman
    March 25, 2009
    iamthethinman
    Of course, I watch a ton of J-horror. Suicide Club/Circle/whatever was one of the ones that caused a clamor and got me interested. Then I watched it and felt a little ripped off. It seemed like it could have been great if it focused. I?m used to the esoteric unfolding of crucial ...( read more)story points and the pattern of cryptic endings, but that movie showed good enough potential that I was ready for the ?change of pace? that was Strange Circus.

    So, enter what I would consider morbid/perverse noir but is the most luminous and vibrant of visual assembly. It really tries hard to bring the broken linear timeline and confuse, which works. Then, when the pieces fall together, it makes sense overall ? except when you look at what these people have gone through. It follows the female lead, but gives next to no background, except for the _____, of anyone else which might have helped set up the story and mood ? maybe creating better atmosphere. And while it is wonderful to look at, Miike killed that with Django. Kurosawa (2nd) and Miike are now the par.

    I really want more directors with visual flare and a sense for scene and editing direct something they don?t script. This guy is one of them.
  • jjb3332003
    February 18, 2009
    jjb3332003
    Certainly strange, definitely disturbing, and confusingly thought-provoking.
  • ArnoldPizzey
    November 20, 2008
    ArnoldPizzey
    12year old Mitsuko is a student at her Father (Gozos) school. She is also the object of his perverse sexual gratification. Gozo locks her inside a cello case and makes her watch him and her mother during their sexual congress. Eventually, Taeko, the mother is persuaded to trade...( read more) places; she now watches from within as Gozo rapes his daughter. The abuse continues at home and at the school Mitsuko attends where Gozo is headmaster.
    The dynamic of this malignant relationship is such that Taeko becomes jealous of her daughter and proceeds to physically abuse her whenever Gozo is away. During one particularly frenzied attack, Taeko slips and falls downstairs breaking her neck. Now Mitsuko is coopted into the role of wife and, unable to endure the unending cycle of abuse, attempts suicide by jumping from a building.
    Although she survives the fall, she is now confined to a wheelchair. Gozo now sates his rapacious sexual appetite with a string of prostitutes, openly having sex in front of his paralysed daughter.
    The veracity Mitsukos horrific ordeal is challenged when, the possibility is raised that these events are fictional; taken from the manuscript of a controversial horror authors latest book.
    The latter part of this movie confronts the viewer with the questions; Who is the author? Where is Gozo? What has become of Mitsuko? The answers to these questions lie in the damaged and fragmented minds of the players. Ultimately, there is a reckoning, with a cruel vengeance brought upon those responsible.
    I see this movie as being an allegory of the disintegration of Japanese society ?Sion Sono returns to themes of loss of personal and group identity first covered in Suicide Club
    However, I believe that Norikos Dinner Table is his most coherent treatment of alienation and atomisation driven by westernisation
    Having watched this movie and having sat through the seemingly neverending making of documentary (where the director provides no insight into his intention ?except he says to make a beautifully grotesque spectacle), my take is that Sion Sono vision is flawed ?I get the allegory, I get the beautiful grotesqueness but I cannot accept the imagery of child sexual abuse as portrayed here.
    In many peoples minds child abuse is a taboo subject, and, rather like the way that the phrase 911 has become iconic, the subject of child abuse ?particularly child sexual abuse has become a metaphor for the most unimaginably awful thing that can happen to a human being.
    This is of course, not the case.
    The worst thing that can happen to a human being is death, but, as children we point our finger at a playmate we say Bang! and death has now become a metaphor for Game Over, so now, when a filmmaker reaches into their bag of handy shocks there is little left. except for the depiction of children being used for sexual gratification.
    In the depiction of the abuse.
    The sexual abuse of children is surprisingly commonplace. As well as my own experience of abuse, it is a sad fact that as I get older, I discover that many of my friends and loved ones have endured abuse.

    In reality, children enduring abuse, have voices, they share their fears and hopes with a favourite doll, they cry to their teddy bears, they pray to Harry Potter, They pray to Hello Kitty. This is too raw a nerve to be touched upon by this director, instead, Mitsuko is objectified to little more than an icon; we do not hear her thoughts, we do not bear true witness to the bleakness of her soul. There is some vague voiceover about her home and school being littered with traps but this sounds more like a statement taken from the script notes rather than
    A genuine voice.
    I believe that Sion Sono does a great disservice to genuine survivors of abuse when he presents Mitsuko in such a simplified manner.
    I therefore can not, in all conscience recommend this movie
  • heavyd2000
    November 11, 2008
    heavyd2000
    The film David Lynch wishes he could make. Brilliant. Sono is one of the best director's working today. This story is horrorfying. It's stunning to look at and the acting is just great. He has grown since suicide club.
  • danieljparsons
    September 18, 2008
    danieljparsons
    Suicide Club was a fascinating film but also all over the place. Here's hoping this one is a bit better.
  • jes25924
    June 30, 2008
    jes25924
    Speaking of violence, Sion Sono(director of Suicide Club)'s latest film Strange Circus, is an erotic horror story, steeped in incest, pedophilia, trans-sexuality, and screaming. Sometimes were in a carnival, other times walking down a blood covered hallway that looks like the ins...( read more)ide of a giant monster, other times within a cello case watching our parents do the deed, or gazing at a creaky carousel which never quite works. These images are hammered down over and over again, punctuated always by more crying and screaming, until like many modern Japanese horror films, the narrator is proved to be unreliable and then identity's of the characters go switching around. Its a lot more focused than Suicide Club, more visual texture and beauty, cleaner, crisper performances mostly. I've heard this mentioned as part of the "ero-goru"(erotic grotesque nonsense) a growing genre in Japan in porn, literature, and film; Giger, Lovecraft, and Sada Abe mixed in a wet dream. This film does attempt to delve not only into the genre, but the production of the genre itself (who writes it and why), however by the end, were given a revenge story that doesn't seem to fit well with the subdued nihilist realism of the rest of the movie, unlike Suicide Club it doesn't invoke laughter or a sense of the tragicomic or socially relevant satire, it's just grotesque, then kinda stupid, still pretty, but less erotic. It almost had me, but it's insistence on cliché in the end(chainsaws and chains and fake limbs), make it lose any redemptive value. Gozu and Visitor Q, are better samples of the genre, if better is the right word.

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