The 2017 documentary , directed by Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor of the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab , is a visceral and deeply unsettling portrait of Issei Sagawa, the Japanese man who became infamous for murdering and partially devouring a Dutch student in Paris in 1981. Rather than a standard true-crime narrative, the film is an experimental "fresco about flesh and desire" that forces viewers into an uncomfortably close proximity with its subject. A Study in Extreme Close-Up
: Much of the film focuses on the relationship between Issei and Jun Sagawa. As the documentary progresses, Jun reveals his own "unorthodox sexual and sadomasochistic fetishes," creating a disturbing parallel between the two siblings. caniba 2017
In 1981, Issei Sagawa committed a horrific crime but avoided prison after being declared legally insane by French authorities. He was extradited back to Japan, where legal loopholes allowed him to become a free man and a bizarre pop-culture phenomenon. By 2017, when Paravel and Castaing-Taylor filmed him, Sagawa was a frail stroke survivor living under the care of his brother, Jun Sagawa. The 2017 documentary , directed by Véréna Paravel
We watch Sagawa eat a cheese sandwich. We watch him discuss his "weakness" for female flesh while picking his teeth. We watch his brother, Jun, who acts as his lifelong caretaker, describe the humiliation of cleaning up after Issei’s impulses. In one of the film’s most unbearable sequences, Issei recreates the bite mark he left on Renée’s buttock—by biting his brother’s arm. As the documentary progresses, Jun reveals his own