There's a clever bit of wordplay in the original title of Yoshiyuki Kishi's (Ab)normal Desire: Seiyoku (性欲) means sexual desire, but the first kanji, Sei (性), is replaced by the kanji for "correct," (正), also read as Sei. And in a culturally rigid society like Japan, anything that strays from that "correct" desire is met with contempt, derision and fear.
Natsuki (Yui Aragaki) has a strange relationship with water. Once in the past, she shared that relationship with an old classmate, Sasaki (Hayato Isomura,) but they haven't seen each other in years. A class reunion brought out by a wedding draws the two together again, leading to a rediscovery of sorts. Meanwhile, a policeman (Goro Inagaki) grapples with his son's decision to stop school and become a content creator, wary of living anything other than what he sees is the "correct" way of doing things.
Natsuki and Sasaki's desires serve as a metaphor for sexual and social minorities, their paraphilias alienating them in a place they cannot call home. "I feel like I'm an alien living a short stay on Earth," one character muses. It's done with much nuance, with tittilation all but absent in the entire film. There's also the visual metaphor of the fish trapped alone inside an aquarium. To find a person who understands these desires and even shares them provides so much relief to our protagonists, because the existence of like-minded people means that they aren't alone. That loneliness is articulated so well in scenes where either Natsuki or Sasaki engage socially with other people but don't feel "normal", or feel like they fit in. Subtle pressures from coworkers and family members to live a set existence is suffocating to them, leading them to withdraw and lash out in different ways.
Water in itself holds a special metaphorical meaning in (Ab)normal Desire: in that while it signifies life and it flows and does not hold one state, it also signifies a raging force that can cause harm. Paraphilias are benign as long as they do not harm others, but when they do, society tends to conflate the harmful and harmless, and that leads to inevitable tragedy.
An engaging watch from start to finish, (Ab)normal Desire is perhaps Kishi's most layered, complex work.
Mateo (Jansen Magpusao) is an ordinary schoolboy who messes around in class. During one particular instance, he accidentally kills a classmate in a fit of anger. Desperate to hide his crime, he turns to his godfather (Ronnie Lazaro), who works as a hitman for an influential person. As he lives out his days under his employ and works his way up the ranks, his faith begins to shake.
People usually do not leave the womb as killers - we may instinctively act out in violent ways, but systematic, purposeful violence is taught, or it permeates so deeply in a society so as to make people accept that this is the way things are. Sheron Dayoc's The Gospel of the Beast shows a Philippines where violence is so entrenched in our consciousness that when we commit it, the instinct is not to become accountable, but to rationalize it, to find ways to make it more efficient, to escape from its consequences.
While Mateo is himself partly religious - near the start of the film, he prays as his colleagues bury a corpse - his beliefs change gradually as time goes on. His empathy begins to waver, and as he dehumanizes the people he helps kill, he himself loses his humanity. The beast's religion is violence, the act of killing becomes his prayer. He becomes a tool for others to use for the means of other, equally violent but far more powerful men. Jansen Magpusao's second feature role after Cinemalaya's John Denver Trending (2019) cements him as one of the country's foremost young talents, perfectly embodying Mateo's descent into beasthood.
There is, however, hope at the ambiguous end of the film, that there is a chance for humanity to be regained, for violence to be unlearned. But it will take a lot of time, effort and a cultural shift that we as a country might not yet be ready to undertake.
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