Love’s Whirlpool

The setting is straightforward: one split-level living room, one evening, four couples, three beds, and one theme. In a luxury apartment, four men and women meet for a night. A student, a sales rep, an office worker, a nursery school teacher – strangers up until this evening – sit wrapped in towels next to each other. They chat non-stop, making superficial small talk about their jobs, favourite actors, TV series and hobbies. Time passes, and their self-consciousness slowly starts to fade. They get closer. But love is not a subject of conversation. There is only sexual gratification – this is a cool, detached sex party, free of emotion or passion. The actors remain nameless except for the labels Man 1 to 4 and Woman 1 to 4. At the end, they leave without knowing much about each other.
In “Love’s Whirlpool”, Japanese director Daisuke Miura, who describes himself as a child of the TV drama generation, tells the tale of the desires of a peer group that has everything it needs and buys anything it lacks. But these people only fulfil their physical rather than emotional needs. They live lives of utmost superficiality, surrounded by popping colours that match those on TV yet as lonely as late night shoppers in the supermarket.