Instant Swamp

Title: Instant Swamp (aka Insutanto numa)
Rating: 4/5
Genre: Comedy
Starring: Kumiko Asô, Morio Kazama, Ryo Kase
Director: Satoshi Miki
Language: Japanese

Within the first minute of frantically cut fast paced dialogue, you realise this isn't to be a normal film (except perhaps by Japanese standards of course). Even the character whom this centres around opens by complaining about how life is slowly grinding her down, dragging her kicking and screaming into a set monotonous life, all the whilst arguing with her mother who's pointing at swamp sprites in the garden and making her morning mix of 'Milo Sludge.' Yes, this is about as “normal” as it ever gets as before too long we're introduced to a tale about believing in the unbelievable, curses and magical dirt, dodgy antiques, a scraggy looking man called Light Bulb who likes to leave the taps on before he goes out and a punk rocker/electrician ironically named Gas, but let me back up for a moment.

Haname is settled into her life somewhat, but she feels a lack of tension or excitement in her monotonous day to day life; her work as chief editor for a fashion magazine, dealing with anything that might be of interest to a wide audience, and failing at it. Badly. In fact, it isn't long before the entire business goes bust and they all bid it goodbye. Jobless and dejected, she returns home only to discover her mother in a coma, having fallen into a swamp searching for a water sprite to prove their existence to Haname, and in the dredging of her comatose body uncovered a bag of thirty year old mail, amongst which is a letter destined for her real father. Blaming all her bad luck on the cat talisman she threw into a swamp as a child, believing her to have been under its curse ever since, she tracks down her real father, but what she uncovers is not exactly what she expected.

Miki would appear to be no newcomer to comedy; in fact I seem to be arriving late to this party as he already has the best part of half a dozen full-lengths under his belt, and if there's more where this came from it wouldn't surprise me if he soon began to amass a cult following. There's an odd quirky adorability to this film which only seems to have found a match made in heaven with the energetic Kumiko – again no stranger to acting with an impressive filmography already under her belt, including “Kairo” and “Casshern” to name a few – whose childish temper tantrums and outbursts seem perfectly suited to the style of film strived for. Much of the humour doesn't derive so much from the script as much as her effervescent nature, spontaneously dancing around the rest of the cast in a manner that has even them genuinely puzzled and her mannerisms that never fail to entertain.

I have no better way to describe this than stereotypically 'Japanese' humour; that quirky, goofball off-the-wall 'lolwut' sort of random sequence of events that twists and turns like a roller-coaster. It's hard enough to figure out what's happening at the time let alone try to guess at where its heading, but you can always rest assured that it does indeed have a direction, allowing you to sit back and enjoy the spontaneity. With plenty of laugh-out-loud moments and an all-star Japanese cast allowed to let their inner insanity go into overdrive with their characters, this eccentric bittersweet tale of one woman's quest for excitement does everything I could have asked of it. Miki, I guess I'll be diving into more of your work sooner rather than later...