The House Where the Mermaid Sleeps

Kaoruko and Kazumasa are a couple living apart; they have agreed to divorce once their daughter Mizuho starts primary school. But the child drowns in a pool, and though she is pulled out she never comes round. The doctors set two roads before the family: accept brain death now and give her organs to children waiting for them, or wait for her heart to stop of its own accord. The mother chooses to wait. When the technology her husband’s firm develops, which moves the limbs of paralysed patients by electrical stimulation, comes into the house, the girl’s body begins to move, and those around them start asking who all this is being kept up for. Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s hundred and twenty minute Japanese film was adapted from a novel by Keigo Higashino; Ryoko Shinohara and Hidetoshi Nishijima appear.