One of the signs of aging is that the sort of loud music you loved as a teenager now bores and irritates you, if it doesn't drive you out of the room entirely. Movies can be the same way: Try as I may to channel my inner 15-year-old in the screening room, I sometimes mentally push the volume control to the left.
My main difficulty with Mika Ninagawa's "Heruta Sukeruta (Helter Skelter)," though, is not just the over-amping of the eclectic soundtrack. Composer Koji Ueno's slashing, thrusting avant-garde sounds, in fact, are more interesting (and given the film's subject and style, more appropriate) than the usual tinkling piano score or saccharine J-pop.
It's rather the sensory pounding that this dark satire on the local beauty and fame business delivers on every level, from the visual and aural to the narrative. This is of course Ninagawa's trademark as a fashion and art photographer: She rarely uses a pale pink when a full-blooded red will do.