Day 5 of the Philadelphia Film Festival

Today I only managed to catch one film. This was due to having to catch up on some work at home and it was probably the strangest film I have yet to see at the festival so far.

The film is called UNDERWATER LOVE and it a Japanese Pink Musical. If you’re not up on your exploitation genres pink is the equivalent to American softcore the only difference is pink films are still shot on film and shown in theaters which are dedicated to this strange little genre. There is also other rules which the genre usually adheres to but I won’t get into that too much here.

This film happened to be about a young boy who is reincarnated as a Kappa (a mythical Japanese creature that is part turtle and part human that loves to eat cucumbers and dump water on his head) who has come to see his childhood love who is now 30 and about to get married. There is a reason for his visit but I rather not spoil that to tell you the truth.

The film is definitely low budget and has a definite charm to its lack of funds. The musical numbers are strange because there is not much in the way of choreography or even synching the singing on screen with the songs.

The film’s look is what saves it from a fate as a simple piece of exploitation. The film has a very dreamy fairy tale like look to it that definitely helped make some of the strange things on screen seem actually some what believable and more watchable.

While this film is not for everyone I had a lot of fun watching this strange little film. Would I watch it again? Probably not but it was definitely fun once. So if you like strange Japanese fareI think you owe it to yourself to check it out at least once.

The screening of UNDER WATER LOVE I saw at the Philadelphia film fest had quite a few issues. First being the film started without picture but with sound. Then the picture appeared, but with no subtitles for the Japanese audio. Then the film was restarted and was not in the proper aspect ratio much like the screening of BATTLE ROYALE with the image overflowing on the sides of the screen.

Someone complained and then the side curtains were pulled so the screen fit.

Then since the subtitles were getting cutting off at the bottom they spent about 15 minutes shrinking the picture and enlarging it, which I found super distracting. For the first 30 minutes they were fiddling with the screening.