This made-for-TV drama has some interesting moments, especially when Iwai lets the camera rest for a moment. The female lead (Myoko Yoshimoto) is as relentlessly hyper as the female ghost in Ghost Soup, but I suppose that's par for the course in TV land. The private detective who bookends the film is little more than a footnote and acts like one, as do most of the one dimensional auxiliary characters. The story is probably too purposefully oblique (shallow?) for its own good, looking a bit cheesy jumpcut TV pretentious on occasion, but Tadanobu Asano shines very brightly in an early appearance as a youth who likes tropical fish, classical music, and occasional flashes of calculated violence.
Some faint ripples from the early work of JJ Beineix can occasionally be seen, most notably in the use of classical music, and the way that the parts are greater than the whole. The story is weak, but some of the visuals are splendid. Particularly a short pink section showing a heavy swell at sunset. The loft where the boy (Asano) lives is aesthete heaven, and I couldn't help thinking that Iwai was trying to sneak some high art into a fairly lowbrow TV commissioned piece. I'm just guessing, but the flashes of outrageous beauty seemed quite incongruous in the context of the rather prosaic plot.
Worth watching if you want to see how Shunji Iwai and Tadanobu Asano started out. Both seem to be on the fast track to quality movie making, particularly Asano, who effortlessly dominates proceedings. All in all, I enjoyed watching the slightly transparent TV production plot devices, and lazy televisual editing. The subtitles drag slightly behind the dialogue on the DVD I saw, but not enough to confuse. Apart from that, they're uniformly excellent. While it isn't a lost masterpiece or hidden gem, Fried Dragonfish is short, and pretty enough in patches, to gently amuse without overly taxing your brain or your patience.
Some faint ripples from the early work of JJ Beineix can occasionally be seen, most notably in the use of classical music, and the way that the parts are greater than the whole. The story is weak, but some of the visuals are splendid. Particularly a short pink section showing a heavy swell at sunset. The loft where the boy (Asano) lives is aesthete heaven, and I couldn't help thinking that Iwai was trying to sneak some high art into a fairly lowbrow TV commissioned piece. I'm just guessing, but the flashes of outrageous beauty seemed quite incongruous in the context of the rather prosaic plot.
Worth watching if you want to see how Shunji Iwai and Tadanobu Asano started out. Both seem to be on the fast track to quality movie making, particularly Asano, who effortlessly dominates proceedings. All in all, I enjoyed watching the slightly transparent TV production plot devices, and lazy televisual editing. The subtitles drag slightly behind the dialogue on the DVD I saw, but not enough to confuse. Apart from that, they're uniformly excellent. While it isn't a lost masterpiece or hidden gem, Fried Dragonfish is short, and pretty enough in patches, to gently amuse without overly taxing your brain or your patience.