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Released by: Bloody Disgusting Selects
Released on: August 23, 2011
Director: Shion Sono
Cast: Asuka Kurosawa, Denden, Hikari Kajiwara, Megumi Kagurazaka, Mitsuru Fukikoshi
Year: 2010
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The Movie:
From director Shion Sono, the man who brought you Suicide Club, comes Cold Fish, a story about a man named Shamoko (Mitsuru Kukikoshi) who runs a small tropical fish shop with his foxy oversexed wife, Taeko (Megumi Kagurazaka). Shamoko was married once before, however, and from that first marriage he has a daughter named Mitsuko (Hikari Kajiwara) who is constantly at odds with her stepmother. One night when Mitsuko is out, Shamoko takes a phone call - Mitsuko has been busted for shoplifting at a supermarket and the security guard and manager want to speak to her parents. They head down to pick up their wayward kid and amazingly enough, before the grumpy manager can call the cops a kindly customer named Murata (Denden) convinces him to let her go free, making Mitsuko promise that she won't do it again. If that weren't enough, well, he owns a tropical fish shop of his own called Amazon Gold, the megastore of tropical fish shops if you will where he puts into practice his belief that business should be entertainment as well. Shamoko and his family are invited to the store for a tour and once he and Murata hit it off, they decide to become business partners.
Shamoko soon finds himself working for Murata, and then later, so does Mitsuko, the later eventually moving in with him along with a few other girls in the same age range who find themselves getting into trouble. If that weren't weird enough, perpetually horny Taeko spreads her legs for Murata as well, but this doesn't damage her marriage to Shamoko, instead it seems to help it. At any rate, it's all going swimmingly, pun intended, until one night Shamoko sees Murata and his beautiful wife, Aiko (Asuka Kurosawa), get rid of someone that Murata has had a business disagreement with. When Shamoko understandably wants to call his relationship with Murata quits, his family is basically held hostage to force him to keep working with Murata - at which point, he snaps.
Cold Fish is a bit like Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs in that it takes a very meek and mild common man and pushes him to his breaking point so that he can save the people he cares about. Here Shamoko is a typical Japanese working class citizen - he's insanely polite and is far more likely to bottle up his emotions and soldier on rather than let his feelings out and potentially show weakness or improper behavior. The events he goes through in this film, like those that push Dustin Hoffman's character in Peckinpah's movie, force him to move past that hang up, though the end result, again like Straw Dogs, is messy, bloody, and very, very violent.
Moving at a very deliberate pace, Cold Fish will likely be too slow for those who need instant gratification or have to have a 'hook' (see, there's another fish metaphor) ready to reel them in within the first few minutes. Instead it lets us get a feel for Shamoko and his plight by showing us the family dynamic he lives with. As such we understand some of the problems that are so prominent in his marriage and in his relationship with his daughter and on the flip side of that coin we also understand, though to a lesser extent, the reasons that his wife and daughter act the way that they do. When he's forced into action in order to do what needs to be done, his actions are not just defensive but rather an inevitable explosion, a release of untold years' worth of repression all coming out at once and in the most horrible way imaginable.
Yet, underneath this slow and calculated descent into chaos is a twisted sense of humor and this is no more apparent than in the casting of the singularly named Denden, a popular Japanese comedian. He throws himself into his role with such complete conviction that you'll have no problem believing him in the part. His instantly 'best buddies' relationship with the far less outgoing Shamoko is so bizarre that you can't help but laugh at it. Mitsuru Kukikoshi is also excellent in his role, and he does a great job with his body language in subtly telegraphing to attentive viewers just where his character is headed. All in all, as twisted and perverted as this film is, and it offers both plain old regular violence and extra disturbing sexual violence in spades, it's clever enough, suspenseful enough and so well made that it never feels like true exploitation but rather clever and well crafted storytelling.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer on this disc isn't bad at all. The color scheme employed in the movie is a bit on the dank and dreary side so you can't really expect eye popping hues but detail is fine as are skin tones. There's a bit of shimmer here and there and some mild aliasing but no problems with compression artifacts to note.
The Japanese language Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound mix is also of pretty decent quality, spreading the effects and the score around with some slick style and demonstrating properly balanced levels from start to finish. The optional English subtitles are clean, clear and easy to read.
The only extra, aside from trailers for a couple of other Bloody Disgusting titles, is an interview with the film's director, Shion Sono, who talks about what inspired this film, why he made it the way that he did and how he feels about the performances.
The Final Word:
Cold Fish is a pretty twisted affair that takes a little bit of time to get moving but which ultimately pays off with a crazed look at the cracks that occasionally occur in Japanese society and just how far man can fall into madness. Bloody Disgusting Selects' DVD is short in the extra features department but it looks and sounds decent enough and is absolutely worth seeking out (though it should be noted that it has been released on Blu-ray in other territories).
