Cold Fish (5 Stars)

Sion Sono is my favourite director, and this is one of his best films. Anyone who watches the film for the first time must be confused for the first half hour. I certainly was. I had no idea where the film was going. But if you're acquainted with Sion Sono's films, you know that however quietly they start, they accelerate into giddy heights of madness.

Nobuyuki Shamoto (pictured above) owns a tropical fish shop. His wife died three years ago, and he's married a young woman (Taeko) who's barely older than his teenage daughter (Mitsuko). Shamoto loves his wife and puts up with her faults, such as the fact she can't cook. Mitsuko hates Taeko, which she expresses in open rebellion against her parents.

One evening Mitsuko is caught shoplifting. A charismatic man called Yukio Murata persuades the shopkeeper not to press charges. Murata owns a larger tropical fish shop. Within 24 hours he's involved in every aspect of Shamoto's life. Shamoto himself becomes Murata's business partner; Mitsuko works for Murata, which involves sleeping in his house; Murata begins an affair with Taeko.

Sion Sono calls this the second film in his Hate Trilogy, which consists of "Love Exposure", "Cold Fish" and "Guilty of Romance". I've known the films for years, but I could never understand why they're a trilogy. They're very different stories with nothing in common. Today it finally dawned on me what the connecting factor is.

Each film follows the same underlying formula, however different it might be on the surface. They're all about two main characters. I'll call them the Innocent and the Hater. Those are my names, not Sion Sono's. In each film the Innocent meets a stranger for the first time, not realising that the stranger has been observing him for a long time and wants to destroy him. That's why I call the stranger the Hater. In this film Shamoto is the Innocent and Murata is the Hater. As in all three films, the Hater enters the Innocent's life, offering friendship, but secretly hating him. In all three films there's no logical reason why he should hate the Innocent so much. The Hater hates because it's in his nature.

This is an incredible film, like everything made by Sion Sono. It's not necessary to watch the Hate Trilogy in order. Just bear their connecting feature in mind. I'm actually watching them in reverse order: "Guilty of Romance" last week, "Cold Fish" today and "Love Exposure" next week.

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