Critics of the Movies

Inspired by an infamous case of serial murder which took place in the Satima province in 1993 (and is still winding its way through the Japanese courts), cult Japanese director Sion Sono’s macabre serial killer drama Cold Fish is a full-throated, blood-soaked examination of a murder and mayhem in Tokyo.

Meek, bespectacled Shamoto (Mitsuru Kukikoshi) owns a tropical fish shop beside a busy highway in Tokyo. His home life is almost as cold-blooded as his floating stock; his rebellious daughter Mitsuko (Hikari Kajiwara) despises his second wife Taeko (Megumi Kagurazaka), while she in turn has become bored with the quiet life they live behind the store. One night, Mitsuko is caught shoplifting in a supermarket but before the manager can call the police, another customer, Murata (Denden) talks him out of it. By coincidence, Murata also owns a tropical fish shop, so invites Shamoto and his family around to take a look at his elaborate set-up. Within a couple of hours, the boisterous Murata has talked mild-mannered Shamoto into a high-priced business deal, arranged a job in his shop for his new partner’s teenage daughter and made a clumsy pass at his lubricious wife.

At first, everyone is pleased with these new arrangements but the over-bearing Murata and his smirking wife Aiko (Asuka Kurosawa) have a sinister ulterior motive. Murata might be a successful businessman but he is an equally adept and ruthless serial killer who boasts of having murdered fifty eight people over the years, sometimes for money and sometimes just for fun. Together with his willing accomplice Aiko, he typically poisons his victims before carefully dismembering their bodies and leaving no forensic traces, a process the killer calls “making them invisible”. Soon, Shamoto has been drawn into the couple’s murderous scheme, blackmailed into helping the killers to dispose of the body of a business investor they have killed for money.

And that’s just the start; it’s gets a lot messier from there. Veteran character actor Denden (who usually cast in comic roles) plays Murata as an explosive extrovert, a charismatic, seductive bully who does whatever he wants, regardless of the cost to others. Timid Shamoto, who spends his free time at the planetarium dreaming of the stars, is harder to get a handle on. Is he just a frightened weakling, easily pushed into doing the unthinkable, or has there been murder in his heart all along? We don’t know for sure because the character doesn’t seem to know, with Sono drawing out the suspense across a nerve-shredding two and a half hours before a jaw-dropping finale.

Not one for the squeamish, Cold Fish takes no quarter yet the film cannot be easily dismissed as just another exploitative genre horror. Amidst all the sleazy carnage Sono mounts a serious exploration of the tensions between obedient Japanese conformity and the sensational thrill of transgressive criminality. The director asks significant questions about the human capacity for evil and carefully analyses his findings. As compelling throughout as it is stomach churning and unsettling, Cold Fish slowly builds into a nightmare of brutality and pain; brilliantly acted, daringly edited and scored with a thunderous soundtrack of crashing drums and squealing violins.

PJ Dillon’s Irish thriller Rewind opens with a young woman sitting in a circle at an AA meeting, wordlessly mouthing the Serenity Prayer. Karen (Amy Huberman) is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, but has been clean and sober for seven years. A city girl, she was wild in her twenties but has settled down with her husband Brendan (Owen McDonnell), a successful businessman, and their 4 year old daughter in a satellite town, somewhere outside Dublin. Life is boringly normal, precisely the way Karen wants it to be.

Then Karl (Alan Leech), an old boyfriend, turns up unexpectedly having been “away” for a few years. Karl, whose surface charm barely hides a sinister, unstable personality, knows things about Karen’s past. “That was a different life”, Karen says, but soon Karl is interfering with her future, the plans she has made and the life she has built for herself and her family. With his easy smile and con-man's instinctive understanding of propriety, the interloper worms his way into the family home, pretending to be a long-lost cousin. Brendan, who knows his wife had problems with substance abuse in the past, is suspicious, but what can he do? Then, a package containing a video tape turns up and Karen has to take a road trip with Karl in a desperate effort to keep her past where it belongs, buried deep and out of sight.

Cinematographer turned director PJ Dillon’s debut feature looks terrific, as you’d expect, washed in cool blues and ominous greys by Director of Photography Ken Byrne, and is keenly paced and tightly edited. The script, from Dillon, Ronan Carr and Roger Karshan, is cleverly conceived but even over a terse 80 minute running time, feels as if it is missing a twist or two. The staging is sometimes stiff, the dialogue lacks polish and Huberman and Leech’s game attempts at inner-city Dublin accents at times sound like poor impersonations. The later stages of the plot hinge on an absurd and improbable coincidence, undermining Dillon’s otherwise carefully constructed realism.

For all its flaws, mostly attributable to the scant production budget, Rewind is superbly acted with Dillon making the most of finely judged performances from his talented cast. More familiar as a smiling, carefree presence in Cowboys & Angels and Man About Dog, Leech plays a convincing scumbag, conniving and dangerous while Huberman, wide-eyed and cold-hearted, perfectly expresses Karen’s shame and fear of discovery. As the panicking husband, McDonnell brings a recognisable bewilderment and sympathetic panic to what is an underdeveloped role.

Like Margaret Corkery’s inky black comedy Eamon and Conor Horgan’s soon-to-be-released apocalypse drama One Hundred Mornings, Rewind was financed by the Catalyst Project, a practical creative initiative from the Irish Film Board, supported by broadcasters and training agencies, which has resulted in three films completed for a total budget of less than €800,000. All three films are of a quality that belies their micro-budget origins and all have won awards at festivals at home and abroad. Although there are issues surrounding distribution and promotion, expensive endeavours not covered in the original budget, the Catalyst Project has been remarkably successful and fully deserves to be renewed.