The Films of Hisayasu Satô: Volume #2 - An Aria on Gazes / Love - Zero = Infinity

As pink film auteur Hisayasu Satô evolved as a filmmaker, he both expanded and refined his fascination with connecting elements of melancholy, violence, voyeurism, and repressed sexuality. In this second installment of THE FILMS OF HISAYASU SATÔ, Pink Line presents two of his most celebrated and also most controversial features from his prolific early 90s output, presented in new director-approved restorations from their 35mm original camera negatives.

In AN ARIA ON GAZES (aka The Bedroom), an exclusive Tokyo club offers a safe haven for its clients to anonymously indulge in perverse and deeply personal erotic fantasies as the lines between reality and imagination become increasingly opaque - and dangerous. One of Satô’s most lyrical and structurally experimental films, which effortlessly blends moments of tenderness and brutality, centers on a stirring performance by Kiyomi Itô (Muscle) and an appearance by real-life cannibal Issei Sagawa.

In LOVE - ZERO = INFINITY, Satô’s focus on bonding and connection through voyeurism hits a fever pitch in this simultaneously unsettling and romantic saga of two disturbed outsiders finding unexpectedly kindred spirits in each other. Tōru Bessho, a lonely voyeur whose feverish desire for companionship borders on stalking, is hired by a doctor to follow his mysterious young wife. But as they each grow increasingly aware of the other’s presence, violent desires also begin to erupt within them in this fatalistic piece, blurring intimacy and blood ritual.