Review: COLD FISH - Darkly Funny, Bloody Social Satire

rating: 3.5

Shion Sono is probably best known to Western audiences for his uneven if admittedly enticing film Suicide Club, which boasted a grisly opening scene in which a train platform full of school girls simultaneously dive in front of an oncoming train. In the interim, Sono appears to have lost little of his edge, and even gained a little; Cold Fish is every bit the daring, brazenly over-the-top film you would expect from the man, yet it also retains a more meditative quality than his best-known work, even if it is far too long and more than a bit ponderous. That demented sense of humour that pervades throughout most all of Sono's films is here in great abundance, at once inviting his audience to revile what is occurring on-screen and get a perverse little kick out of it too. The plot, lifted liberally from a real case of a husband-and-wife serial murderer team from mid-90s Japan, sees sickos Aiko and Murata lure an unsuspecting couple, Shamoto and Taeko, into their world. After Mitsuko, their daughter, is caught shoplifting, Murata essentially helps to smooth it over, and the fact that he runs a fish shop, just like Shamoto, makes them fast friends. Naturally, it's not long before all manner of lascivious sex takes place, and plenty of murders too. The catch? Murata, who offers Mitsuko employment and a roof over her head, essentially holds Mitsuko hostage, and so Murata gets to have his cake and eat it, copping off with Shamoto's wife and forcing him to help clean up his killings. Hardly new is film's tendency to satirise the mechanised, soul-eroding potential of a middle-class existence, as is seen in anything from American Beauty to Straw Dogs (Peckinpah's film even has the same poster image as this one - a man with broken glasses), but rarely, if ever before, has it been tackled in such an acid-tongued, blunt, and intentionally crass manner. Whereas the aforementioned films might depict characters trapped inside large homes and jobs they can't stand, in a spiritual Hell as it were, here Sono has little penchant for allegory or restraint; he places his protagonist in a very literal, physical Hell, in which he must assert himself if he is to escape. Essentially a call to arms for the middle-minded types numbed by a comfortable living, it speaks in a less accessible, and absolutely less-pleasant way, but it carries a mighty heft of power alongside its depravity. The fact that's it all rooted in truth makes it that much more unsettling. The film's real issue, essentially, is a pronounced lack of focus; while there's enough going on to keep you unerringly horrified throughout, the 144-minute runtime feels utterly superfluous, and the pacing is inconsistent; it is brisk at points and, for the most part, as methodical and exacting as the killers it depicts. The performances, however - especially Denden as the power-hungry Murata and Asuka Kurosawa as his equally, if not more vile wife, Aiko - are uniformly strong and keep the quiet passages engaging enough, though a punchier script may have better gone hand-in-hand with its graphic, exaggerated sensibility. Cold Fish is like a splash of cold water - or yet, blood - in the face; it pulls no punches and manages to satisfy as a visceral gorefest and also as an intelligent and darkly funny examination of family, age, and class which spans across cultures and countries. If you're new to Sono, you're in for a treat provided you have the strength of stomach, while aficionados should find themselves right at home. Slack pacing aside, this is a disarmingly brutal, feral social satire. Cold Fish is on limited U.K. release.