A riff on the nature of crime and homoerotic yearnings, this focuses on two prisoners, Jun and Shirow, both banged up for different murders and who form a tender, uneasy relationship.

Beginning with Jun straddling Shirow’s corpse and confessing to the murder, a fractured plot flashes back, forward up, down and sideways as two detectives investigate the murder.

Although Jun repeatedly confesses killing Shirow, literally everyone in the prison has reasons for offing the violent, maybe yakuza (he sports an impressive tattoo on his back) prisoner, including an unhinged inmate and a twitchy, clearly guilty-of-something warden.

Working from Ikki Kajiwara and Hisao Maki’s (under the joint pseudonym Masaki Ato) gay manga Elegy for Boy, Miike ditches conventional plotting (the above synopsis is very straightforward compared to the film) in favour of a meditation on male-bonding, male-violence and male physique.

All against a background of spirituality versus science, with the prison improbably placed between an Aztec pyramid and a rocket launch pad.

Beautifully shot with rich colours and admiring shots of perfected male bodies, all located in the most expressionistic sets this side of Dr Caligari, Big Bang Love, Juvenile A often seems more like installation art than a proper film.

But, despite the arch-surrealism and slo-o-o-o-o-w pace (it seems longer than its swift eighty-five minutes), Miike’s film lingers in the mind.

Bursts of bone-crunching violence are reminiscent of Shinya Tsukamoto’s movies and some lush, Lynchian eroticism hold the attention, while traces of humour suggests the filmmakers are not taking it too seriously.

Pretty boy Japanese actors Matsuda and Ando make a good effort of Jun and Shirow, while supporting characters are fleshed out by Miike regulars, including Endo and Ishibashi.

Takashi Miike has an incredible, diverse, and scarily prolific body of work and each new film is worth a look.

But, as brave as Big Bang Love, Juvenile A is, the lasting impression is that Miike should make films for audiences again.

Rob Daniel