Admittedly, the comparison made in the headline to the Disney classic “The Little Mermaid” is 100 percent incorrect. After all, in Greek filmmaker Konstantina Kotzamani’s directorial debut it’s exactly the other way around: where in “The Little Mermaid” a mermaid wants to become a human, “Titanic Ocean” is about a person who wants to become a mermaid – but only then rediscovers his humanity. The whole thing doesn’t take place in a magical underwater kingdom, but in a special boarding school in modern-day Japan.
Thanks to all sorts of neon-colored, shiny and sparkling interiors, it’s not that far away from the Disney wonder world, and at times it even seems so unreal that you’re almost shocked when the film leaves the boarding school in the last quarter and explores the aesthetically not so attractive outside world, although ironically it’s precisely then that the events slip into fantastical realms. And yet: Kotzamani has created an audio-visually absolutely intoxicating coming-of-age drama that doesn’t necessarily tell anything new, but does develop an all-encompassing pull that is hard to escape.
Akame (Arisa Sasaki) sees herself on the way to becoming a mermaid.
The focus of the plot is Akame (Arisa Sasaki), who wants to become a mermaid. And as unreal as the setting may seem to most people, mermaiding, as the technical term goes, actually exists. It is a not very well-known swimming discipline in which you – mainly women, although a few men take part in the sport – glide through the water in wave-like movements in a mermaid costume with a monofin.
Of course, this isn’t entirely effortless, after all you not only have to glide through the water with the utmost grace, but you also have to hold your breath for minutes at a time. In addition, the head of the boarding school demands that her students become complete mermaids. The trainees not only have to choose their own mermaid song, they also receive a new name. This is how the perfect illusion is to be sold. The competition is correspondingly high. But gradually Akame begins to have doubts as to whether the self-sacrifice demanded of her is really the right thing for her…
A Japanese film that isn’t actually a Japanese film
“Titanic Ocean” has also more or less slipped into a different skin. The Greek-German-Romanian-French-Spanish-Japanese production is set in Japan and features Japanese actors who – in the original version – also speak Japanese. If there weren’t opening and closing credits with all the European names, you might think you were looking at a purely Japanese film. Mermaiding originally comes from the USA – and in terms of content, “Titanic Ocean” doesn’t actually deal with any Japan-specific topics. So one might get the idea that the choice of setting is once again intended to serve the cliche of the quirky Japanese. On the other hand, Kotzamani does include criticism of the mermaid business – one of the girls gets her training from one Sugar daddy pay.
And of course the commodification of bodies is a constant theme. Everyday life is hard, the drill is merciless – but criticism of capitalism is still not necessarily a priority. Instead, the plot revolves around the inner life of a young woman who increasingly – to stay with the theme of the film – swims freely, breaks away from social pressure and also has to deal with the slowly occurring changes in her body. The second half becomes a love story before the film descends into the fantastical in the finale.
Aesthetically close to “Suspiria”
As already mentioned at the beginning: basically nothing new. What makes “Titanic Ocean” an experience is not the “what”, but the “how”: the coming-of-age story is designed here more as an ethereal, floating experience than as a straightforward teenage drama. The film repeatedly takes the time to allow you to experience the sensual experiences of the protagonists – for example with melancholic views of the colorful lights of a city at night.
There are also scenes in the slightly otherworldly boarding school, which with its way of lighting sometimes brings to mind Dario Argento’s witch horror cult “Suspiria” – or the colorful, simply beautiful, flawlessly implemented underwater shots of the mermaid aspirants. Everything is accompanied by the spherical debut soundtrack by Spanish keyboard player Patricia Ferragud, which once again complements the effect of the images.
Conclusion: Actually, you already know all this, but you just don’t know it that way – Konstantina Kotzamani’s debut is actually an extraordinary cinematic event! Anyone who can adjust to the slow motion pace will experience a classic coming-of-age story in a completely different way in “Titanic Ocean”.