In my short time on Earth I think it’s fair to say that I’ve seen my share of messed up films and as I’m growing older it is slowly taking a little more to surprise me when it comes to these ‘F’d up movies,’ as I’d like to so eloquently put it. I knew I would be in for a in an interesting adventure when I decided to attend my first Pinku eigafilm, also known as a soft-core porno genre in the Japanese film biz. But it wasn’t just the fact that I would be watching a soft-core with an audience, which alone was a bit weird especially when you consider the average age was probably 38, it was the fact that this was a pink musical. Yes, a musical, with singing, dancing, and sex around the clock.
Shinji Imaoka’s film, Underwater Love (Onna no Kappa) is what I would describe as a horrible piece of comedic work, which is something I think I expected going in, but, there are some outrageously hysterical moments that helped chip away some of my frustration before another terrible scene came along.
The movie is about a woman named Asuka who works in a fish factory and just got engaged with the manager. One day she encounters a Kapaa (a mythological creature that has a human body with the features of a sea turtle-beak, shell, etc.-they like to eat cucumbers and do sumo wrestling) named Aoki, high school friend of hers who drowned years ago and is now back as a Kappa. With his arrival, Asuka must decide who she wants to be with, she did like Aoki back in high school but she also likes her fiancé, Taki.
The movie is ridiculous because you anticipate that one of these freaky Japanese girls is going to screw this Kappa whose shaft is the funniest thing you’ll ever see in a sex related movie scene (see poster). Mind you, the Kappa costume is just all rubber and you can see the human mouth inside it, it’s so ridiculous.
You’re probably wondering to yourself, how was the musical aspect…we’ll you’re probably not but I’ll tell you anyway. I’ve never seen more chaos in a musical. The dance numbers started out of nowhere, the choreography was awful, and it is, what I like to call, stereotypical middle aged Japanese dancing at its finest. The French-German duo Stereo Total put the music together but that wasn’t nearly enough to save the film.
I have a spoiler question for you (WARNING). How do you bring somebody you love back to life? You take off all of your clothes and you screw them until they wake up (see poster above). END SPOILER It totally happened, no lie, and then when that person comes back to life, something even more outrageous happens.
It’s hard for me to take anything I write in this review seriously because the movie was so bad yet extremely funny and out there. I am experiencing an internal struggle bashing it because it still made me laugh despite knowing that most people would hate it. I know, I’m a genre fan through and through, and that’s how you’ll really know if you’re going to like it or not. I guess if I think about it, it did its job of entertaining me despite its terrible moments.
Without giving anything else away, you’ll see this film if you are a fan of wacky Japanese cinema. This is my first Pink film so I have nothing to compare it to but I wasn’t as much of a fan of it as I am with some of the crazy stuff Noboru Iguchi puts out.
Rating: A hysterically bad Japanese soft-core musical (2/10 for normal people; 5.9/10 for people like me)
Underwater Love stars Sawa Masaki,Yoshiro Umezawa, Mutsuo Yoshioka, Emi Nishimura, and Ai Naritaand can be seen at the Tribeca Film FEstival on April 22, 23, 27, and 28th
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