Postcard

In actress Megumi Kagurazaka's eyes, director Sion Sono - with whom she has made three films - is sensitive, child-like and a hopeless romantic. The fact that he's also her husband probably explains her perception of him, but it's a somewhat surprising description of a filmmaker who has made such controversial movies.

His work includes films about schoolgirls killing themselves by jumping off subway platforms (Suicide Club), a teenage girl who kills her abusive father and her classmates (Love Exposure), a goldfish-trader's daughter falling foul of a sadistic couple (Cold Fish), and a homemaker whose life is turned upside down when she begins a part-time career in prostitution (Guilty of Romance).

'He really understands how women feel,' she says, of Sono. The couple were recently in town to promote Guilty of Romance, in which she plays Izumi, the 21st century Japanese equivalent of Catherine Deneuve's character in Luis Bunuel's 1967 film Belle du Jour. 'A lot of times I think he's a very feminine person; the screenplays and stories he writes are very, very sensuous. He knows how women think, and his films are romantic. Probably that's why he can make films with such cruelty in them.'

While Guilty of Romance is a defiantly gory affair - Izumi's story runs parallel with a police investigation into brutal serial killings - the bloodshed and sex obscure a theme that runs through most of Sono's films. It deals with the plight of a confused individual trying to break free from an oppressive, patriarchical social order to find her own self-worth.

Sono, 50, says the film's title is a charge he could level at himself. 'Rather than describing myself as romantic, I think you could say I look at this world like a boy,' he says. 'What I've always wanted to express with my films is the importance of love, but somehow audiences keep on misunderstanding me.'

What Guilty says about love is how poorly the concept sits in a society where the maltreatment of women is omnipresent. 'I'm not just interested in telling stories about women, but it's just that in Japan, they are suffering from such unfairness,' he says. 'They still get sexually harassed in the workplace, where their career prospects aren't that good in the first place. And then at home, they are expected to take on a lot of responsibilities.'