Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on October 2011
Shinji Imaoka is a long-time pinku (softcore porn) filmmaker and clearly one of those that think the B-grade (at best) genre has real aesthetic value. It makes sense then that he’d decide to make a musical (or musical parody, take your pick) pink film based around Japan’s mythical water imp, the kappa. What is a little bizarre is how many people he could get to take the concept seriously, like Wong Kar-wai’s legendary cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who shot this mess. Admittedly, it does border on so-bad-it’s-good territory (and that’s surely the point). The “costumes” are absurd; the kappa is a barely concealed man with plastic beak, scalp and turtle back. We could call this Brechtian and point to similarly styled art films in the ’70s, but I suspect Imaoka wasn’t thinking about it that deeply. The musical numbers are horrible pop music with unconvincing lip-synching, again surely intentional. Shot in just five days (and looking like it) the nominal story involves Asuka (Sawa Masaki), a 35-year-old fish factory worker who’s engaged to boss Hajime (Mutsuo Yoshioka). One day she sees a kappa who claims to be her long-dead high school crush Aoki (Yoshiro Umezawa) and he pursues her for the love they never shared. After a few stupid musical numbers and tepid sex scenes (inter-species and otherwise) it all quickly gets rather boring and I think this is probably the most damning thing you could say about this obvious attempt to be off-the-wall. (English title: Underwater Love; 87 min)
