Deep Sea, Baby: Kotzamani Goes Down Where It’s Wetter
Greek filmmaker Konstantina Kotzamani heads to Japan for her directorial debut, Titanic Ocean, its fanciful title a reference to the private reminiscences of a young woman who is heavily involved in training to earn a coveted position in a niche market known as ‘mermaid show business.’ Like a live-action inverse of The Little Mermaid, an intense training program finds a coterie of willowy women adopting new personas and aesthetics as they learn to leave their land bodies behind, at least temporarily. As a result, it’s a somewhat thematically and metaphorically amphibious venture which, like the Hans Christian Anderson classic it evokes, has everything to do with finding one’s own voice.
Akama aka Deep Sea (Arisa Sasaki) is an arguably troubled young woman who is training to become a professional mermaid at an elite school designed specifically to breed talented graduates for a successful career in a boutique industry. On the horizon is a make-or-break contest which will determine her future. Except Deep Sea seems to be disconnected from reality, struggling to leave behind a ‘self’ in order to fully adopt the demands of a new one. She is bonded with her classmate Yokohama Blue (Kotone Hanase), her emotional support to make it through the training. However, Deep Sea also seems to have lost her voice, which is necessary since mermaids are expected to sing a song specific to their own individuality. When an accident during training occurs, she’s rescued by her coach, Kotaro (Masahiro Higashide, of Hamaguchi’s Asako I & II, 2018), awakening dormant desires.
“Strong women make waves,” is the mantra evoked by the headmistress of the training program, a woman who is expectedly austere. Simultaneously, it should serve as the tagline considering how formidably involved Kotzamani’s film is in grappling with the formation of a new identity outlining a process which demands the complete sublimation of a corporeal form in exchange for an imaginary identity – and one whose physical demands can prove fatal. As such, Titanic Ocean, so named for Deep Blue’s own personal fantasy world (i.e., she’s living in her own head), is an exercise in acute ethereal angst, kind of like an anime film sprouting gloriously to life (with a handful of names like Yokohama Blue and Eternal Sunset furthering this fantastical aspect). But there’s also something quite unnerving, considering just how specific and downright extreme the build up to the fateful mermaid contest is.
Strangely, this all-girls environment also feels steeped in a bizarre, fanciful menace, this mermaid cosplay somehow mixing the irreverence of “Ru Paul’s Drag Race” with Suspiria. Likewise, a delayed orientation into what’s actually going on also feels like the sinister, homogenous organizations from Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s first two features Innocence (2004) and Evolution (2015), wherein young boys and girls are being mysteriously raised and trained for reasons which are left anxiously unclear.
Ultimately, finding her voice suggests Deep Blue will now be ‘activated,’ for mermaids with singing powers become the sirens who lead men to their demise, which is thematically explored here in her relationship with Kotaro, a coach whose belief in his pupil becomes his detriment. Kotzamani leads us into a hypnotic, trance-like spell where the narrative is arrested, almost paralyzed, as if we’ve all been stung by a jellyfish and drifting into the only safe space available – inside Deep Sea’s mind.
Reviewed on May 20th at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival (79th edition) – Un Certain Regard. 130 Mins.
★★★/☆☆☆☆☆
