Love's Whirlpool (2014) (DVD) (English Subtitled) (Hong Kong Version) DVD Region 3

95% of the film is set inside the club – a multi-level apartment hidden in the narrow residential streets of Roppongi District. The rules are simple: Four men and four women can have sex freely in the club from midnight to 5 am. They're free to swap partners, as long as the other person consents. Most importantly, the participants are not allowed to contact each other after the evening is over.

The participants come from a wide range of backgrounds: a schoolteacher, a salaryman, an aggressive freeter (low-paid twenty-something who moves from one temp job to another), a shy NEET, an introverted university student, the overweight virgin and the experienced regular. Adapting his own play, Miura takes his time to set up the character dynamics through the group's awkward first meeting before delving into the "action." The 30-minute section is an interesting showcase of group communication, from the silent beginning to establishing the alpha male who would be the equivalent of the first boy to cross the dance floor to ask a girl to dance at the high school prom.

The emotional core of the story lies in Ikematsu Sosuke's NEET ("Not in Education, Employment or Training) and Kadowaki Mugi's introverted University Student. So desperate for sexual gratification that he spends his last 20,000 yen on the sex club, the NEET eventually develops feelings for the University Student, who transforms into a completely different person in bed. However, when the basic concept of the activity is to have sex with as many partners as possible in one night, the club may not be the best place to find true love, or in the case of a couple who joins the proceedings in the middle, it may also be the worst place to test it.

As one can expect, the sex in Love's Whirlpool is less important than the consequences of the act itself. Except for an extended spinning overhead shot on the beds (one can imagine that was not in the stage play), Miura never shows more than what he needs to show. Even though the film's promotional tagline promises that the actors are only fully clothed for 20 minutes of the film, they are actually wearing their towels for most of the remaining 100 minutes as they make small talk and talk behind each other's backs about the others' performances.

Miura's central theme isn't particularly enlightening, as the boundary of love and sex has been discussed in the arts for decades. Instead, I find myself more riveted by the dynamics of the group itself, from the opening to the inevitable climax when everyone gets a little too honest to each other. Just as we can never really believe what the club's sole clerk (Kubozuka Yosuke) says about the state of the club, we can never be sure about how much truth the participants are bringing into their interactions with each other. In that sense, Love's Whirlpool is a great depiction of modern courtship.