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Film: Instant Swamp
Release date: 24th May 2010
Certificate: 12
Running time: 120 mins
Director: Miki Satoshi
Starring: Kumiko Aso, Ryo Kase, Morio Kazama, Eri Fuse, Kankuro Kudo, Keiko Matsuzaka
Genre: Comedy
Studio: Third Window
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
Director of Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers, Satoshi Miki is an established name in Japan with an unmistakable style that doesn't shy away from the ludicrous – you’ve been warned!
Haname Jinchoge (Kumiko Aso) is a young professional working as an executive for a fashion magazine in Japan. But under the exterior of a successful business woman lies the frustration, desires and imagination of a young girl trying to make sense of the world around her, amidst the stories of magic and superstitions from her friends and family.
When Haname's mother falls ill, she discovers the identity of her father, taking it upon herself to find him and discover the man he really is. Her discoveries take her through any number of small adventures, making new friends and discovering more about her past and her beliefs...
The film starts with Haname working as a high level executive for a fashion magazine, with aspirations of starting her own magazine in Europe in order to be closer to the man she believes to be her soul mate - Shunsuke. Shunsuke is a photographer for the magazine and is the only man with whom Haname doesn't suffer a large static electric shock every time they touch. Hitting straight to the heart of the problem, this aligns the film to an episode of Ally McBeal or Sex And The City.
From here, Instant Swamp moves in an incredibly erratically episodic way, skipping from vignette to vignette with very little sense of underlying chronology. Rather than a cinematic experience, this is like watching a set of clippings from one of the aforementioned sit-coms. With its few bright, easily identifiable characters and locations, it is one very small step away from mindless catch-phrases that spark off a surge of canned laughter and audience applause.
Instant Swamp aims for the heady heights of Chan-wook Parks I'm A Cyborg But That's OK and Jean-Pierre Jeunets Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain – two wonderfully imaginative productions. Where these films succeed - with genius characterisation and central charm and colour - is to pull you into an unconventional world created by the lead characters’ personalities. Without these elements, Instant Swamp merely annoys, with Haname's continuous high-pitched and over excited yelps to the smallest details making the whole experience a true challenge.
As the film progresses through its many mini adventures, the story loses itself - forgetting its original purpose and drive. It starts with the story of a woman’s discoveries of her family, and coming to terms with personal identity - all the time dealing with her beliefs in the superstitions and magic she is always being told is surrounding her but she cannot see – but midway through the film this gets forgotten. The end finds itself somewhere between an episode of Scrubs and children's TV show, with full decibel dialogue between one dimensional characters.
Instant Swamp is a very confused film. It is lost in its sense of purpose and identity, and lacks any real substance. As the story jumps around in a dismissive and unstructured pattern - the acting is so incredibly over played for the intention of comedy that watching the action on screen is an effort in itself.
Instant Swamp feels like a journey through the mind of an 11-year-old girl with A.D.H.D. who has just sank a whole undiluted bottle of Ribena. JP
Film: Casshern
Release date: 10th April 2006
Certificate: 15
Running time: 142 mins
Director: Kazuaki Kiriya
Starring: Yusuke Iseya, Kumiko Aso, Toshiaki Karasawa, Akira Terao, Kanako Higuchi
Genre: Sci-Fi/Action/Drama
Studio: Momentum
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
One could reasonably assume that with such a talented cast on show, and a frankly stunning amount of effort put into imbuing the film with an original aesthetic, there seemed little scope for Kazuaki Kiriya's directorial debut (and a production debut for the Casshern Film Partners) to do anything but garner mass critical acclaim. So what went wrong?
Set in a 1984-esque future, where the world is divided into various super-states that are constantly at war with one another, Casshern focuses on the lives of a father and son. The father, Kotaro (Akira Terao) – as one of the leading scientists in the Eastern Federation – is obsessed with cracking the code to neo-cell (read: synthetic human) technology, ostensibly to help his country, but in reality it’s because his wife is terminally ill and can only be saved through such a breakthrough. Meanwhile the son, Tetsuya (Yusuke Iseya), is away fighting for the Eastern Federation in a conflict with Europa that has lasted fifty years.
The film takes its first turn when Tetsuya is killed in action and Kotaro, overcome with grief, submerges him in the neo-cell gene-mix in the vain hope of resurrecting him. What in actual fact happens is the rebirth of 'Legendary Hero' Casshern through Tetsuya's body, and the subsequent creation of a race of rogue androids through the neo-cell mixture, calling themselves Bio-Roids and led by the fearsome Burai (Toshiaki Karasawa). So far, so cool then.
Supplementing the main storyline is the bratty-but-smart son of the Eastern Federation's Head of State, and heir to his throne, Kaoru (Mitsuhiro Oikawa), a man whose aim is to usurp his father and establish 'The Fed' as the leading global power through any means. You've seen this type of chap before: he's borderline Machiavellian and classical in his composition as a character.
Notwithstanding, on the other side of the fence we have the innocent Luna (Kumiko Aso): Tetsuya's girlfriend and a character around which much of the protagonist's story revolves, even if she rarely has an impact herself.
The story follows this group of characters as they attempt to hunt down, negotiate with, avoid or utilise Burai and his Bio-Roids but, as the story develops, it becomes clear that these beings - wrought as they were by human hands - do not wish to involve themselves in human affairs, unless by 'involve' you mean 'obliterate entirely'…
Casshern is undoubtedly pretty. Not in the sense that Avatar is visually stunning, more in the sense that it has such a bold and striking aesthetic that it is impossible to mistake the film for anything else. The seamless blend of almost anime-like backdrops and marching robot armies with live-action fight sequences is stunning, and the way these are complimented by impressive special effects and character and set design that is frequently jaw-dropping only adds to that experience.
However looking great does not a movie make, and there are problems beneath Casshern's shiny surface - the main bone of contention being that the film’s ambition in presenting an over-arcing aesthetic and a vibrant world for the plot to take place within is also its greatest drawback. Too often it performs leaps of faith from scene to scene as it attempts to cram two or three films worth of substance into a 142 minute running time. There is just so much going on that it often leaves the viewer behind in an attempt to fit everything in, and this frequently leads to apathy, unable to get to grips with what’s happening.
The acting is solid (at times very good - Karasawa and Oikawa's performances are both brilliant), but there's little scope for anyone to perform because of how frequently Casshern attempts to encapsulate literally everything that is going on within the world. There is political intrigue and upheaval, a love story, a tale of a husband’s love for his wife - and that same man's deteriorating relationship with his son. It is, quite frankly, too much for one film.
As something to just sit back and watch it really is entertaining: the design is good enough to cover for unexplained elements of the plot and the action sequences are pretty much constantly stunning, but there feels like there's so little substance behind what's happening that it's difficult to fully recommend Casshern, despite the areas in which it excels – notably in the action and sci-fi – because it lacks drama. Drama is certainly attempted, but none of the characters get enough screen time to ever gain any real empathy from the viewer, and so ultimately Casshern fails in this category.
Should appeal to people of most ages, who want to see a visually pleasing film, but too frequently Casshern substitutes looks for substance and in doing so can become incredibly frustrating to watch. JD
