In Love and Deep Water (2023)

Interesting film. Not sure it worked.

After skewering the tropes and conventions of mysteries in last summer's series, Hatsukoi no Akuma, it's clear that Sakamoto understands the genre and could have written a satisfying, bog standard mystery set on a cruise ship. But, instead, he seems to have chosen not to, and it makes me wonder why.

Our intrepid, ersatz detectives are Ubukata and Banjuku who have a meet-cute as the cruise ship is leaving the dock in Hokaido for a 45 day cruise to the Aegean and back. Banjuku is trying to track down the woman she suspects of cheating with her boyfriend and who happens to be Ubukata's girlfriend, and somehow ends up on board with no ticket and no luggage but manages to have a week's worth of fashionable wardrobe to wear throughout the film. There are TONS of little details in the film like that which make no sense at all. None of them are insurmountable, but the filmmakers do not even seem to care. And so do not come to this film expecting to find a tightly woven thriller where every detail was intentional and counts towards the "solution" to the mystery.

But does it work as a romcom instead? Eh... There is SOME chemistry between the two leads, and Ubukata has some character growth, but Banjuku is just sort of an MPDG tugging that growth along, and we really do not get much a backstory and motivation for her other than her suspecting her boyfriend of cheating.

And so it's not much of a mystery and not much of romcom? Is there anything here to salvage the film? Well, you know: it's Sakamoto, and he generally does have things to say. (See, for instance, my coverage of his oeuvre through 2021 here on MDL: https://mydramalist.com/article/a-watcher-s-guide-to-the-series-of-sakamoto-yuji)

In this film, he touches a bit on classism and the divide between the haves and the have-nots who serve them, and, as usual, he questions the reductivism of eat-the-rich, and, while he does condemn all rudeness and abuse, he weaves a bit of complexity into that dichotomy by focusing on the resulting relationships and how they can bridge the gap between social classes.

He also considers at length the importance of people's intentions over their actions. Does it matter if someone intended to cheat, but did not in fact do so? Does it matter if someone intended to murder, but did not in fact do so? I do think Sakamoto intends to say yes and always. But I'm not sure that thesis is enough to bring this film up to his usual standard.

If you're looking for what Sakamoto has to say about mysteries go seek out Hatsukoi no Akuma: it's fun, and the acting is off the charts in that last episode. If you're looking for his views on romance, I'd probably go with Saikou no Rikon even though it's explicitly set after the bloom has come off the rose.

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Movie-length commercial for MSC Cruises

This movie was literally the middle of the road for me. To me, it had more wrong than right, but I'll just give it a 5 and move on.
I really struggled with this movie, as it didn't seem to know what it wanted to be. Was it a comedy? A mystery? A farce? Except for the main characters, everyone else's hair, makeup and clothing were WAY over the top. A lot of the characters just seemed like caricatures of real people - that makes it hard for me to feel like I'm getting to know them and to feel empathy for them. Most of the characters were a little creepy, including the children. Was that so that we couldn't figure out who the "bad guy" was?

I think the biggest question I had while I was watching it, how did the FL get on board the ship without a ticket, how was she able to remain on board once the ship left (the ML knew she didn't have a ticket), where did she get her wardrobe since she didn't have luggage? And I could be mistaken, but when we first meet her, I don't think she even had a purse on her.

All-in-all, for me this movie was too "campy" and difficult to take seriously.

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Good Enough

Japanese Movie '' In Love and Deep Water '' is a romantic comedy/ cozy mystery. It takes place on a cruise ship where two people who had been cheated by their partners witness a murder the victim of which goes missing.

The movie tries to blend in two things, the mystery-crime case and the love story. However, as it is a movie, it doesn't have enough time to have them both developed nicely. Thus, both of them end up half-baked.

However, the story isn't that bad. The mystery is indeed intriguing and, in the end, I do wish that it was better presented, as it had lots of potential.

The love story was cute as well. From the prompt that brought the two of them together, to the progress of their relationship, it was enjoyable to watch, and it would have been great if they had more time. The couple had chemistry as well, which helped with the enjoyment of the romance.

Finally, the performances were great by everyone in the cast and, especially, the kids!

So, overall, six out of ten.

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Quaint little movie

A Quaint but unusual story of the strange goings on of an upper class Cruise Ship. In Love and Deep Waters is a story of how a ship’s Butler keeps his clients satisfied. He has a very subservient attitude. It never dawns on him that he should be any other way. That is until the young son of a rich person’s maid tells him to take a good look at his actions. This movie offers an eclectic bag of drama emotions as its characters’ back stories are isolated. Some may like this story, which is a Murder Mystery Suspense RomCom.

From celebrated Japanese writer Yuji Sakamoto.

Winner of the International Film Music Critics Award (IFMCA)
Ryo Yoshizawa and Aoi Miyazaki

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A movie neither romantic nor suspenseful

A murder mystery rom-com that has a hard time balancing rom-com antics with mystery suspense. This is the setup for the romance: our male lead is a butler known as a bland pushover, and what helps him keep it together is his girlfriend. Our female lead is a more aggressive and bold character, polar opposites of the male lead. She comes aboard the ship he is working on as a butler and breaks the news that their significant others are cheating on them with each other. Whatever guess you have about the romance side of the plot, you'd be correct. There is nothing new or fresh with this as it hits every beat you can imagine.

What makes it enjoyable enough is the chemistry between the leads. They play off each other really well and add some life to their characters, even if the romance portion moves fast. As I haven't mentioned the murder mystery portion of the story yet, it's because the movie didn't seem that interested in it. The characters involved in that part of the story get very little screen time and characterization. When the case wraps at the end, even with a twist involved, the story doesn't give proper closure to all the characters involved, focusing more on our main couple. It makes one wonder why even have the murder mystery plot since it didn't add anything and didn't affect our main characters in any significant ways; it's just kinda there to pad out the runtime, which is 2 hours and 7 minutes, and probably about a half-hour of that could have been shaved off.

It's not an awful film; it's just very plain and would get lost in a sea of films with a similar premise. My recommendation for this would be if it's a Saturday afternoon, it's raining outside (not too heavy but not too light either). You are tired but not sleepy, you have a cup of tea beside you (no caffeine). You lay down on the couch with your arm resting under your head as you crave something inoffensive and not too deep, then this film is just for that.

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A waste of time.

I can't recommend, it's a total waste of time.
I'm not sure what it was trying to be but manages to do nothing right or interesting enough, and acting is generally quite forced and over the top. Only FL was better and her character was probably the most interesting of the bunch but they don't dwell much in the characters themselves. ML wanted to be a butler because he likes to serve? what? haha I'm sorry, it was lame, it would have been more believable that he said something about wanting to travel, see other places in the world or even learn other languages.

The movie is boring, slow (for what is the plot) and the writing is bad. It's difficult to make a movie in a single location and for it to be engaging and entertaining enough, they didn't succeed at all in this movie.
Sub-plots are brought to the front and back depending on what is convenient to the point they feel forgotten (like the murder "mystery"). The "mystery" is one of those that seems obvious but then it's revealed to not be what you thought just for shock value and where they didn't take you along the journey at all, completely pointless. It wasn't even shocking as a reveal though, because they didn't make me care at all about anything in this movie. The crime here it's calling this thing a suspense, romantic, mystery or amateur detective movie. It's just a mush of nothingness in my opinion.

There obviously are also unresolved questions at the end of the movie, like what happened to the mother of the kid, what happened with the will in the end, what happened to the son and wife of the man that died, they might not have ultimately killed him but they were accomplices of murder in a way and of trying to falsify a will. Why are the two kids dancing happy in the end? There is just no answers.
Also, I'm sorry but that's not kissing. If they're going to make the actors "kiss" like that might as well just not have any kissing scenes, it was weird and cringy to watch.
FL arrives in the cruise with absolutely nothing, yet she manages to have a different outfit daily.

If it had been fun and entertaining I could tolerate some of the other negative aspects of this but it really wasn't, it was a chore to finish.

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A few plot holes

I had hoped for a more murder mystery movie. This was like here's the murderer and you saw everything around them. There was a plot twist at the end though, but that wasn't well executed.
The actors did a fairly good job.

But let's get on to the plot holes.
Weren't the married couple (Misaki and Sohei) reliable for anything at all. They hid the body for a few days and was trying to rewrite the will. Misaki should be arrested for attempted murder or at least assault for the pool and the same for Sohei for the attempt on the caretaker/maid at the stairs. She must have remembered that incident or her walking in on the dead body.

The more I wrote the lower the stars got. I thought of giving it a 6 in the beginning, but now it's a 5.

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Simple movie with a weak love story and an easy murder mystery to solve

Netflix little blurb on this movie states " Romance, mystery and mayhem unfolds aboard a luxury liner heading for the Agean Sea, when a butler and a passenger try to solve a baffling murder.' With that little blurb as well as when I saw it being advertised, I took the opportunity to watch it today. And... well...it just did not live up to the expectations.

Now, other murder mysteries that I watch, I just don't know who done the dirty deed. But I kid you not, LITTERALLY halfway through this movie, I realized who the murder was. I mean, another murder mystery that I watched some months ago, I And besides finding that out, I really did not like how some of the customers treated Ubukata. Like they could have appreciated him a bit more. And out of all the supporting character, I only really liked the kid- he seemed to have more common sense and a better grasp to like that the ML.

And then all the thing that Mr. Kuruma Michihiko and his wife did (making it look like Mr. Kurma was alive for so long until they announced he was dead, pushing down Sakumoto Kanatolike's mom like that after she found out the truth. Like they also should have been arrested and locked up until they returned to Japan. And well, the romance really was not as strong as I was expecting it to be. I mean, it was okay. Just not mind- blowing.

So, in the end I give this movie a 6.5. It had an interesting storyline that just wasn't formulated in an exciting way. The actors were okay (especially the young actor who plays Sakumoto Kanatolike).

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Overall... it's just okay.

Unfortunately, it was a bit on the mediocre side, if not leaning towards bad. The movie had the potential to be an engaging murder mystery but it messed up by revealing everything too soon and by being predictable imho. There were some visually appealing shots (the pool scene!!!) but I don't think that makes up for the rest of this mess.

Oryo was great as always and such a dreamboat... However, the chemistry between him and Miyazaki Aoi was seriously lacking. The supporting characters were rather uninteresting, except for the role portrayed by Yoshida Yoh, who stood out as magnificent and fabulous whenever she appeared on screen. Her charisma is simply unmatched.

Overall... it's just okay.

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El hecho de ser un crucero el escenario principal, ese gran elenco y el tener a un gran guionista detrás de esta peli se prestaba mucho a tener expectativas altas.

La trama empieza bien pero con el paso del tiempo pierde fuerza, te muestran situaciones y personajes que luego no te explican quién son y porque hacen o hicieron ciertas acciones; dejan muchos hilos sueltos... hubiera sido mejor que se centraran en resolver eso en las 2 horas que dura el filme en lugar de agregar todas las escenas 'románticas' de unos protagonistas que tienen química cero de principio a fin, todas las escenas del género se ven muy forzadas e incómodas, no salvo ni una sola, es más, para decirles que siento que les vi más quimica a los actores secundarios que son las parejitas de la fiesta.

Miyazaki Aoi (protagonista) era una de mis favoritas antes de su hiatus pero si este proyecto fue su regreso a las películas... fue muy mediocre. Me gustó la actuación de Yoshizawa Ryo en solitario como el mayordomo y también de la capitana.

Se nota que Sakamoto Yuji (guionista) nomas trabajó por el cheque, vaya manera de decepcionar.
Me quedo con otros trabajos de el como: Omameda Towako (que también reseñé en su tiempo) o Woman.

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