Introduction

The field of movie remakes is plagued by unnecessary projects and cheap cash-ins, but in some cases the choice to remake a specific movie can be meaningful. One of those meaningful remakes is Hideo Jojo’s latest project, Thorns of Beauty. Rather than simply copying the Hong Kong movie Beyond Our Ken (2004) to the letter, he rewrote Pang Ho-Cheung’s narrative so that his message can be formulated within a Japanese context, thereby offering a whole new audience a glance at the impact of phallic mirages in the societal field.

Review

One day, while on the bus, dancer Riko Majima (Tina Tamashiro) is approached by a timid woman she does not know. Momo Tomita (Honoka Matsumoto), who works as a librarian, quickly introduces herself as Kentaro’s ex-girlfriend and tells her that she wants to discuss something. She asks Riko, who is the current girlfriend of professional photographer Kentaro Yukawa (Keisuke Watanabe), to help her obtain the explicit photos he took from her and avoid becoming the object of revenge porno.  

Thorns of Beauty is a narrative that explores the different neurotic ways phallic beauty determines the subject’s logic in an engaging manner. Yet, as the exploration of these different  logics is intrinsically linked with the turns and twists the narrative takes, we will refrain from analysing Riko and Momo in-depth in the main body of this review/article as not to take away the pleasure from the spectator.

Yet, this limit does not hinder us from exploring the duality of the Other and the way the phallic dynamic determines Kentaro’s position within this Other. To do so, we need to start from the following question: Why is Momo afraid of becoming the object of revenge porno? Or to put it differently, why would Kentaro, who broke up with her, want to take revenge on her by uploading those pictures? Momo’s signifiers imply that the only reason why fear has come to possess her are the horrifying fantasies that blossomed after hearing what happened to one of her co-workers. In this case, as long as those erotic pictures exist and have a certain materiality, the fantasies of falling prey to such revenge cannot be contained.

Yet, what does Momo truly fear? In our view, what she fears is being exposed to the Other as the sexual being she truly is. Even though the patriarchal Other (i.e. a societal field structured by specific norms, demands, and ego-facades) demands that the female other exudes a certain playful eroticism and offers the male other an erotic glance of her sexual nature, the explicit reveal of this sexuality, this sexual enjoyment, is radically repudiated and punished.

On the one hand, the Other applauds the blossoming of eroticism – the societal field orders the exploitation of female eroticism in the imaginary field to increase consumption and the intake of fleeting pleasure. Yet, on the other hand, it violently lashes out at and disapproves of those women whose primal sexual nature, whose truth of being, has been exposed in the imaginary field (Narra-note 1). Moreover, this kind of exhibit which generally lead to the expulsion of the female subject form her current societal position also forms the visual object by which men can sexually gratify themselves and enjoy the badly repressed sexual truth concerning women (General-note 1).   

The cooperation between the two women to obtain and delete Kentaro’s private erotic pictures from his computer quickly cracks Kentaro’s rather pristine image, signalling the mendacious element that structures the ego he reflect to others (Narra-note 2). What kind of subject/desire resides behind the seductive facade of kindness and thoughtfulness (Narra-note 3)? Is his ego, as an imaginary construction, merely a carefully laid out trap for the female other? If so, what for?  

That Riko and Momo can become friends is simply because their interactions are not poisoned by male sexual desire, which enables them to go beyond the field of the ego and speak to each other as subjects. What, at first glance, initiates their friendship is nothing other than the fear that, beyond their control, their sexual truth will be exposed and offered to the phallic and masturbatory enjoyment of the male Other. Yet, are they, as subject, not marked by the seductive and arousing dimension of beauty propagated by the Other (Narra-note 4)? If so, is fear for becoming the object of revenge porn the only reason why Momo approached Riko (Narra-note 5)?

Despite richly relying on dynamic shots, Jojo’s composition has a quite measured and agreeable visual rhythm (Cine-note 1). While this rhythm is instrumental in engaging the spectator with Thorns Of Beauty, the scopic pleasure is more depended on Jojo’s beautiful imagery. Hideo Jojo litters his visual fabric with sequences that fluidly and poetically integrate flash-back fragments, visual as well as verbal, within the unfolding of the present narrative and static shots that deliver more striking shot-compositions. Yet, moments of compositional beauty are both found in the way Jojo exploits dynamism to emphasize the elegance of movement as well as the thoughtfulness of his static shot-compositions (Cine-note 2).

The subtle tremble that marks Jojo’s dynamic composition is not utilized, like in many other cinematic narratives, used to heighten the sense of realism, but to foreshadow the surprising revelations and turns that structure Thorns of Beauty. This ominous shadow that haunts the composition – a shadow that might not be perceived as such by some spectators, is created by contrasting the depicted phantasmatic romantic harmony with the visual tremble, the tremor that signals the presence of an unperceived problematic truth that hides behind the fantasy of relational happiness.   

Hideo Jojo’s Thorns of Beauty does not merely explore the destructive effects of the imaginary as a field of phallic deception with his twist-rich and visually pleasant narrative, but also uncovers the deep marks the thorns of phallic beauty left on contemporary society. While Jojo’s latest is not among Jojo’s best, his remake remains a film worth watching.  

Notes

Narra-note 1: The two sides of the Other are constantly evoked within the narrative, be it visually (e.g. the push to make the photoshoot more erotic, the scantily clad dancers at the club where Riko works, …etc. ) or via signifiers (the tale of revenge porn).

General-note 1: What men ultimately enjoy in revenge porn is the very revelation of the women as a whore, as a radical sexual and desiring being.  

Narra-note 2: What puts the ego that Kentaro reflects to the other initially into question is a lie – telling Riko that he has an over-night shoot while he is spending time at a bar with one of his models.

Narra-note 3: Kentaro is, as subject, imprisoned by the thorns of beauty, because his phallic desire has made a certain kind of beauty into its ultimate goal. As his first encounter with Riko and Momo so beautifully illustrate, it is the very beauty of lack that arouses his phallic desire and transforms her into the object by which he can fleetingly satisfy his fantasy of having what the female other desires. Simply said, no lack, no desire.

Momo, for instance, attains a certain beauty due to her awkwardness and Riko because she ends up crying while watching one of his photographs on display. The main reason why Riko keeps arousing his desire is simply because she ‘lacks’ as dancer – she has not made it as a professional dancer yet.

Narra-note 4: Yet, the conflicts that arise as their bond deepens is due to Riko’s inability to let her phallic wish to be the thing Kentaro desires go. Despite realizing his dishonesty and infidelity, she still hopes to be the phallic beauty he cannot live without.

Riko, as woman, is still thorned by the phallic dynamic, of wanting to be the impossible and non-existing phallus for the male other.  

Narra-note 5: Momo is, as the narrative ultimately reveals, also thorned by the phallic dynamic. Yet, rather than wanting to be the only phallus for Kentaro like Riko, Momo seeks, within the field of the imaginary, the way to become the non-existing immaterial phallus for the male other, i.e. the desired female object for a man.

Cine-note 1: The compositional dynamism is not only function of Jojo’s reliance on dynamic shots – and, mainly, tracking-shots, but also due to his elegant play with the pace of his composition. The changes in visual rhythm are, in most cases, caused by sudden changes in the speed by which the character-in-focus moves.

The moments where Riko dances, for example, are generally framed in a more snappy and speedier way.

Cine-note 2: Of course, the visual pleasure of Momo’s composition is also due to the nice colour-schemes and pleasant lighting-design.