Mermaid Legend

Toshiharu Ikeda's 1984 Japanese film follows a couple of abalone divers in a coastal village confronting investors who want to take over the shoreline. Migiwa and her husband, who make their living from the sea, stand in the way of the interests assembling land for a nuclear plant; when the husband is killed she is left alone. From there the film becomes a story of revenge. What Ikeda does is tie genre cinema directly to a political question: how coastal villages in 1980s Japan were bought up for nuclear facilities is not the film's background but its subject. The underwater photography and Mari Shirato's physical performance keep the revenge from being an abstraction. The violence comes out of the pinku eiga tradition of the period and is graphic. Who it's for: viewers interested in Japanese genre cinema, revenge narratives and independent production in the 1980s. Who it's not for: anyone avoiding sexual violence and graphic content, or who will find political argument inside a genre template inconsistent.