Cold Fish

Megumi Kagurazaka

Sion Sono's Cold Fish is the sickest film I've seen in some time, but I mean that in the nicest way possible. This 2010 film is easily the best of the half dozen or so of Sono's films that I've seen. Still, the copious amounts of gore and polymorphous perversity contained within the film will limit the appeal of this picture. Viewer beware! The film is quite lengthy at 144 minutes, but I was not bored or repelled for a moment. I appreciated the film's pitch black humor. The protagonist is a repressed loser named Shamato who owns a tropical fish store. He leads an uneasy existence with a wife named Taeko (Megumi Kagurazaka) and a daughter from a previous marriage named Mitsuko (Hikari Kajiwara), both of whom hold him in contempt. Mitsuko, acting out, is busted for shoplifting at a drug store. The proprietor of the drug store,  Murata (Denden), who not coincidentally also owns a swankier tropical fish store than Shamato's, seemingly takes a kindly interest in Mitsuko and offers her a job. He employs "troubled teens" at his fish store where they reside. Mitsuko, eager to leave home, accepts the job and soon joins the all female crew who attend to their duties in skimpy tees and short shorts. Murata and his mate Aiko (Asuko Kurosawa) ingratiate themselves into the lives of Shamato and his family. Murata eventually seducing Taeko and tricking Shamato into joining in his criminal escapades.

Eventually, Shamato grows sick of doing Murata's bidding and turns the tables on him. This is not a political film per se, but it does seem like a meditation on the Japanese national identity. Certainly, the misogyny of the film seems to be a comment on women's second class status in Japan. This fits within the film's depiction of domination and submission as the basis of relationships. The characters, all two dimensional, seem primarily motivated by lust and greed. Denden, a stand-up comedian, hectors those around him like a sinister Don Rickles. Murata alternately belittles and pep talks Shamato. It is a performance that is both appalling and tremendously entertaining. Sono constantly films Denden from below, looming over the browbeaten Shamato. What Sono is seeking to portray is a dog eat dog world predicated on consumption. We are constantly being treated to shots of creatures in their aquariums being fed smaller creatures for their survival. The world depicted in Cold Fish is an anti-humanist one in which homo sapiens have hardly evolved beyond their amphibious ancestors.