If
you don’t know what Pink Films are, you’re probably
visiting the wrong website, but to summarise – these are
a peculiarly Japanese form of soft porn that, thanks to a combination
of censorship rules and Japanese culture, developed in a very
different direction from their US and European counterparts,
and would provide a good place for the nation’s filmmakers
to learn their craft. These films usually had sex and the centre
of their story, but were often less obsessed with filling the
screen with softcore scenes, allowing some oddball, interesting
and occasionally disturbing films to emerge.
While a genre in decline, the pinku received a shot in the arm
with this very strange movie, which is something of
a pink film / arthouse hybrid. A lot of fuss has been made about
the presence of famed cinematographer Christopher Doyle (there
are no less than three interviews with him on the DVD), though
quite what his name means outside the rarefied cineaste world
is anyone’s guess, while cult electro-pop duo Stereo Total
have provided the musical score (included in early editions
as a bonus disc).
Of course, when people who might consider themselves to be above
a genre decide to do their own take on it, the results are not
always successful, but in the hands of veteran director Imoaka
Shinji, Underwater Love is an entertainingly
demented effort that is both ludicrous and touching. Oh, and
it’s a musical, with incongruous and incomprehensible
song-and-dance numbers scattered throughout.
35
year old Asuka (Masaki Sawa) works in a fish factory and is
engaged to her boss, but her world is turned upside down when
she meets a Kappa – a creature from Japanese mythology
that is a water-dwelling, cucumber-munching, half-man, half-turtle.
The Kappa turns out to be the reincarnation of dead high school
friend Aoki (Unezzawa Yoshihiro), and before long, he’s
turned up at her home, sitting in her tub, and then takes a
job at her factory (his appearance written off as a medical
condition). While Asuka and her fiancé argue about his
presence, and Aoki hooks up with a comely factory girl who is
all-too-happy to have sex with the prodigiously endowed Kappa,
it eventually turns out that he’s here to save his schoolboy
crush from the God of Death, who has decided that it is her
time to die. Only the Anal Pearl can save her…
Shot in five days on single takes, Underwater Love
is endearingly silly. The Kappa makeup is laughably bad, but
the presence of this creature is accepted without question by
everyone in the film (as monsters go, Kappas seem an entirely
harmless bunch), and delirious scenes such as the Kappa blow
job and the nutty dance numbers will have even the most hardened
Japanese movie fan chortling. But as a counter-point to the
silliness, Masaki Sawa gives a genuinely excellent, restrained
performance as a woman who rediscovers the joy of life through
her unexpected guest.
As far as the sex scenes go – while there are a handful,
anyone watching this expecting a soft porn film will probably
feel short-changed. It’s better to see the pinku elements
as simply another ingredient in what is a very, very strange,
but also very, very entertaining film.
If
you don’t know what Pink Films are, you’re probably
visiting the wrong website, but to summarise – these are
a peculiarly Japanese form of soft porn that, thanks to a combination
of censorship rules and Japanese culture, developed in a very
different direction from their US and European counterparts,
and would provide a good place for the nation’s filmmakers
to learn their craft. These films usually had sex and the centre
of their story, but were often less obsessed with filling the
screen with softcore scenes, allowing some oddball, interesting
and occasionally disturbing films to emerge.
35
year old Asuka (Masaki Sawa) works in a fish factory and is
engaged to her boss, but her world is turned upside down when
she meets a Kappa – a creature from Japanese mythology
that is a water-dwelling, cucumber-munching, half-man, half-turtle.
The Kappa turns out to be the reincarnation of dead high school
friend Aoki (Unezzawa Yoshihiro), and before long, he’s
turned up at her home, sitting in her tub, and then takes a
job at her factory (his appearance written off as a medical
condition). While Asuka and her fiancé argue about his
presence, and Aoki hooks up with a comely factory girl who is
all-too-happy to have sex with the prodigiously endowed Kappa,
it eventually turns out that he’s here to save his schoolboy
crush from the God of Death, who has decided that it is her
time to die. Only the Anal Pearl can save her…