Review: Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers

By kevin on August 18, 2008 at 11:48am EDT

For the past few years and without really giving it too much thought I’ve been under the impression that Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers had some sort of inherent flaw that led to the general lack of media buzz and web coverage that would (or should) normally come from a movie with names like Satoshi Miki, Juri Ueno, and Yu Aoi attached. Fortunately I was dead wrong about that. This is one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in a long time and offers a unique, childlike approach to cinematic absurdity you just can’t get from anyone else but Miki.

Suzume (Ueno) is young housewife who’s recently begun pondering her own insignificance. At times she feels as if she’s invisible, a hypothesis repeatedly confirmed by random strangers (and buses) that don’t seem to pay any attention to her existence. It seems as though her only purpose in life is to feed the turtle her husband left behind before going overseas. In fact his conversations with Suzume never go beyond asking if she’s been feeding the turtle before he abruptly hangs up.

Being second fiddle isn’t a particularly new feeling for Suzume, having grown up in the shadow of her eccentric best friend Kujaku (Aoi). She’s always envied Kujaku’s sense of style and her ability to accomplish more than her without even trying. Even their given names are representative of their respective statuses in life; Kujaku being the word for “peacock” and Suzume being the word for the much humbler and forgettable “sparrow”. She holds no resentment against her friend however; she simply wants more excitement in her own life.

One day while racing up the 100-step stairs in her town, Suzume is forced to dive to the ground when an apple cart breaks and sends hundreds of apples barreling toward her. While prone and covered with stray apples, she notices a fingernail-sized flyer advertising a job opening for a spy. The thinking is if you’re observant enough to notice an advertisement that tiny, you’d probably make a pretty good spy. Intrigued by the mysterious possibilities, Suzume eventually calls the number and gets an address to meet her potential employers in 3 days.

The extra time gives her hair a chance to settle down from a recent botched perm that ended up making her look more like Little Orphan Annie than the well-coifed model she picked out from a magazine. When she arrives at the purposely inconspicuous apartment she meets Shizuo and Etsuko, an incredibly quirky married couple played brilliantly by Ryo Iwamatsu and Eri Fuse. It doesn’t take long for them to realize that this girl is exactly what they need; so ordinary in every way that she can blend into any situation, i.e., the perfect spy. For a moment they even contemplate whether someone can be so exceedingly ordinary that they’re actually unique, but this moment of deep thought is cut short by a flurry of playful kung fu punches between the couple. With that, they give Suzume her first spy payment of 5 million yen. They give no details other than to stay as ordinary as possible and wait for them to contact her.

Suzume then returns to her everyday life, only occasionally breaking from her “spy” role to open her fridge and peek at her 5 million yen while letting out a . Suddenly the boring stuff she used to complain about has an exciting new meaning. When she does housework or buys groceries she’s not just doing housework or buying groceries, she’s consciously trying to look “ordinary” as any good spy should. When she feeds her husband’s turtle she does it with spy-like shifty eyes. She now has a whole new outlook on life even though for the most part, nothing has actually changed.

The whole idea of finding a level of excitement and wonder in ordinary, everyday minutia kind of mirrors Miki’s filmmaking style itself. As is usually the case with his films, the journey is way more important than the destination and most of the enjoyability is in the bizarre little tangents and nonsensical conversations, not in any sort of grandiose payoff from the plot. Juri Ueno and Yu Aoi shine in their respective roles, with Ueno particularly impressive in her ability to tone down her personality while still being really funny. All in all this is an exceedingly cute movie that delivers more than its share of laughs. And what it lacks in plot it more than makes up for in both style and charm. Very highly recommended.