Cold Fish (2010)
Directed by: Shion Sono
Starring: Mitsuru Fukikoshi, Makoto Ashikawa, Denden, Hikari Kajiwara
Review by: Keri O’Shea
If you’re familiar with the work of Japanese director Shion Sono – the man behind Suicide Circle (with arguably one of the best opening sequences ever committed to horror celluloid) and Hair Extensions – then you’ll know the way he assaults the family unit with a blend of shock horror and bleak black comedy. Cold Fish is no exception to that formula: this is a lengthy, often uncomfortable examination of an everyday guy who, by increments, becomes involved in events beyond his control. The real horror here is that Shion presents his downfall so intricately that you can understand how such a mild-mannered Mr Nobody could become implicated in such a way: a simple debt of honour becomes the albatross around his neck. Soon, he simply can’t extricate himself from an escalating nightmare without bringing down another nightmare on his own head. In short, despite the Shion ultraviolence, Shamoto could be anyone and just to reinforce that, the film opens by telling us that Cold Fish is based on real-life events.
At the beginning of the film, we see that Shamoto (Mitsuru Kukikoshi) just wants an easy life. Thing is, life’s not all that keen to oblige him. All he wants is to do relatively well with his business (selling tropical fish), and he would like the love and respect of his teenage daughter Mitsuko (Hikari Kajiwara) and his young wife, Taeko (Megumi Kagurazaka). Is that too much for a quiet, respectful citizen to ask? We quickly see just how far away he is from what he’d like: Taeko is bored and miserable, whilst his daughter is a brat. Mitsuko is barely able to tolerate the fact that her father remarried, let alone to a much younger woman, so the pleasant domesticity Shamoto would relish is a charade which barely holds together at the best of times.
When Shamoto receives a phonecall to tell him that his daughter has been caught shoplifting, he’s mortified and heads down there with the girl’s stepmother to apologise profusely (something he spends a great deal of time doing). Just at that moment, the family’s saviour rolls up in the form of the rambunctious and characterful Murata (Denden). Murata happens to be the owner of a huge rival tropical fish store. He convinces the security guard to let Mitsuko off and, better still, he offers to give the girl employment and board at his shop: Mitsuko doesn’t need to be asked twice and, again in pursuit of that quiet life, her father agrees.
It all seems positive enough to start with but, in no time at all, Murata has assumed a dominating, harmful influence in Shamoto and Taeko’s lives. First he insists on social calls, and then via a combination of intimidation and emotional blackmail he browbeats the dutiful Shamoto into becoming his business partner. The better Shamoto comes to know Murata – and his unhinged young wife Aiko (Asuka Kurosawa) – the more he learns that Murata is not to be refused anything, least of all not when he witnesses Murata murder the last guy who dared to do so. He’s also now an accessory. Shamoto has by now lost control over all aspects of his life: his daughter, his wife and his personal autonomy, and he gets dragged further and further into Murata’s volatile world.
From the outset, Cold Fish pulls apart any expectations the audience may have about the villain/hero set-up here. Our main character, Shamoto, is a doormat. You can feel for his plight, but it’s as exasperating as it is touching. Meanwhile, Murata is a stone cold psychopath, but an often funny, charismatic and worldly guy too. This is just a taste of where Shion is going with this: he wants to make you think about who you empathise with and there’s a scene towards the close of the film which made the Dead by Dawn festival audience cheer, despite the content of that scene checking pretty much every box for humour-inappropriateness. This is also testament to the pay-off for our characters which, when it comes, is intense, despite this being a protracted film which could easily have lost twenty minutes without any problem. It manages to stay interesting despite being too long, though: the performances carry it along, and there’s even a demented streak of pathos here.
Cold Fish layers on the violence and the sickly-sexual overtones whilst ultimately presenting us with a bizarre battle of wills. It’ll have you thinking and feeling all manner of things during its (extensive) course, but ultimately its pessimism is its major calling card, with Shamoto as the ill-fated Everyman at the centre of events.