Onna no kappa
Director: Shinji Imaoka
Writer: Shinji Imaoka, Fumio Moriya
Cast: Sawa Masaki, Yoshirô Umezawa, Ai Narita, Mutsuo Yoshioka
Part of: /slash Filmfestival

Plot:
Asuka (Sawa Masaki) works in a fish factory and is engaged to her boss Taki (Mutsuo Yoshioka). Things look good for her, when one day she meets a kappa who turns out to be her drowned first love Aoki (Yoshirô Umezawa), reborn. Aoki tries to rekindle their relationship and even though Asuka is hesitant at first, will she really be able to resist his charm?

Underwater Love is a softcore porn musical: there’s creature sex, bad dance numbers and no budget to speak of. While that sounds like the perfect recipe for an entertaining film, the theory is better than the practice in the end.

Underwater Love is a weird film and while I usually do enjoy weirdness, it got a little much here. There were moments that were very funny but it would have probably worked better as a short film.

The acting wasn’t great (unsurprisingly), the budget definitely wasn’t spent on the kappa costume that was plain ridiculous and the story was rather boring and would have worked just fine had it been condensed down to about 15 minutes. But even so, I doubt that I would have got into it.

The movie’s saving graces are the music by Stereo Total and the dance numbers. According to Brezel Göring from Stereo Total (who gave an interview beforehand), they made the music and did a version where Françoise Cactus sang all the lyrics, just so the movie makers would know how to have the actors sing their own version. But they didn’t waste their time with that but ended up lipsynching. [Also, Stereo Total tried to bring a bit of irony to the film and were refused by Shinji Imaoka.]

Unfortunately my enjoyment of the film was further hampered by the people sitting next to me, who obviously came for the Stereo Total concert after the film and were so not comfortable with watching a softcore porn in public. They continuously made stupid comments (pretty loudly) and I just wanted them to shut the fuck up.

Summarising: Didn’t work the way it should have.