The path to true love takes a circuitous form in this epic Japanese manga-inspired seriocomic fresco, where a young man searching for his own personal Virgin Mary tangles with the sinister Church of Zero, a cult seeking the extermination of human desire. At just shy of four hours, Sion Sono's film asks a lot of the viewer, but it delivers abundantly too for those who can look beyond its seeming frivolity and enthusiastic vulgarity - here you'll find a group of pantie-fetishists using martial arts moves to take clandestine upskirt photos - to discern a serious investigation of the relationship between shame and religion. The plot certainly has its highways and byways, but the heart of this deeply-felt film is a probing intelligence wondering if heterosexual desire can ever be truly pure in a society rife with sexual debasement? A work of undoubted excess, but startling originality too: there really is nothing else quite like it.

The story of a teenage boy called Yu, who falls for Yoko, a girl he runs into while working as an upskirt photographer in an offshoot of the porn industry. His attempts to woo her are complicated by a spot of cross-dressing – which convinces Yoko that she is lesbian – dalliances with kung-fu and crime, and a constant struggle with Catholic guilt.