The primary footage from Konstantina Kotzamani’s debut function has simply arrived, and it’s in contrast to the rest on this 12 months’s choice.
The Greek filmmaker has conjured one thing genuinely unusual and irresistible: a dayglo fantasia about women who prepare to develop into skilled mermaids, and the one amongst them who learns that the costume is just the start.
Set in a Japanese boarding faculty the place teenage women study to carry their breath, carry out for adoring crowds, and swim alongside sharks, the movie follows 17-year-old Akame as she finds her voice, discovers old flame, and in the end undergoes a metamorphosis.
It faucets into one thing primal — the identical childhood longing that made Daryl Hannah’s mermaid in Splash an icon, and that has fueled a real-world mermaid efficiency subculture ever since. (This author explored that obsession in a recent episode of It Happened in Hollywood, with Ron Howard and Brian Grazer reflecting on how they introduced Splash to life.)
As teased within the clip, Kotzamani’s world is full of saturated colours and hypnotic concepts. It’s equal elements aquatic spectacle and coming-of-age strain cooker. It’s the type of movie that invents its personal style — half fantasy, half physique horror, half J-pop fantasia.
A multinational co-production spanning Greece, Germany, Romania, France, Spain, and Japan, the movie boasts a solid of Japanese actresses led by Arisa Sasaki, with music by Patricia Ferragud and cinematography by Raphaël Vandenbussche. Worldwide gross sales are dealt with by Paradise Metropolis Gross sales.
Un Sure Regard has a wonderful observe document for this type of factor — formally adventurous movies that go away audiences barely altered. It’s the part that gave us Lukas Dhont’s Woman and Maryam Touzani’s The Blue Caftan earlier than the world caught up with them. Titanic Ocean has all of the hallmarks of a cult object within the making. Do maintain your breath.
