Titanic Ocean Review | A Vivid Fever Dream Pushing Bodily Limits

With Titanic Ocean, Greek filmmaker Konstantina Kotzamani makes a smashing debut. It has the moody undercurrents of a dark fable, noxious and at an accented remove from regular reality. Premiering in Un Certain Regard at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival, this film moves with limber grace through underwater recesses, snaking into emotional, internal fractures. It’s a tale of transformation that holds up its steep costs under a glaring light. There’s denial, hiding but ultimately no scope for diminishing the actual consequences.

Brilliantly disquieting, Titanic Ocean works a hypnotic pull. Kotzamani infuses seduction, high-wire intrigue, provocation and adolescent anxieties into a seamless mix. It’s set at a Japanese boarding school where teenage girls are tutored in honing the often-dangerous art of being professional mermaids. They must wend gracefully underwater, impress the onlookers, hold breath. They practise the ability to mount a visual spectacle. It’d be an entire journey, encapsulating bending the body, fine-tuning the voice. It’s a holistic approach that is finally at the service of a capitalist-driven exhibitionism. The girls don’t wish to confront this purpose. They are swayed by pursuing a beauty that’s revelled in, hopelessly envied, desperately sought.

The horror unfolds as witnessed by a 17-year-old student, Akame/Deep Sea (Arisa Sasaki). The exposition is exquisite, told in an unearthly cadence. “None of us have been to the ocean. Is it a fear of being real mermaids that keeps us away from it?” the heroine muses, a tinge of terror unmistakable in her voice. She’s curious about the world but also baulks. The quest of perfecting her siren voice intrudes in a central way. Of course, there are jealousies, resentments and typical adolescent clashes. Akame’s evolving fascination and relationship with the coach (Masahiro Higashide) provides the emotional engine. She hesitates initially but struggles to shake off being absolutely riveted by him whenever he’s around. Kotzamani locates a charged, thrumming sexual vim shooting between them. Sasaki brings an innate fragility but also a rock-solid resolve. Akame may be trembling in several fears but she doesn’t wholly abdicate ambition and scamper away, defeated and sullen.

Reality and imagination collapse in a fugue, drifting into a peculiar, wayward tonality. Its textures are deliberately loose, elusive, skipping into a haze before we can pin them down into sharp delineations. We are ushered into a dreamlike place that resides between emotional reality, hallucinatory sensations and sobering temporality. Cold logic softens here into a mischievously imagined, startling reverie-like state of consciousness. Dispel assumptions before stepping into this beautifully unnerving world. It operates by its own rules and Kotzamani builds it with thrilling detail.

Neither are parents sparing. They foist ample pressure on their children to submit themselves wholly regardless of the clear price on their bodies, minds and souls. They gladly hurl their kids into the machinery. We are told a professional mermaid is a “giver of dreams” and can be heftily paid. But not everyone can brace for it. The job siphons a lot if one brings mismatched potential. Deep Sea is anxious about an upcoming contest that fuels the narrative. The winner lands a coveted spot in one of the biggest aquariums.

There’s a deep, billowing sense of atmosphere punctuating characters’ movements, realisations, their eventual trajectory. It’s dipped in an ominous pall, even as the girls strain under the weight of ambition. The agony is directly manifest on bodies. Kotzamani pulls them towards a corner where their underwater pirouetting must be in tandem with plumbing their inner voice. To discover it is to arrive fully formed as a mermaid, a siren. The film is sensitive to the plight without verging on exploitative. It acknowledges the snapping nerves, the immense exertion placed on the girls. Performing on a tight thread keeps chipping away at the girls, testing their breaking point. Kotzamani lays the unravelling with a mystical, unsettling spirit. We sense its spaces slip between the physical and internal. Somewhere in between, the film discovers its perturbing personality.

Along with her DP Raphaël Vandenbussche and production designer Sebastian Vogler, Kotzamani conjures an intriguing, inspired world which is as alluring as menacing. For a film like this to work, the world-building is the first thing that ought to be credible. Titanic Ocean is as enigmatic as ruthless, as sharp-eyed as angular in straddling a mysterious, devilish core. We walk through its world with bated breath, half-intoxicated, half-dreading. It’s a smooth balance Kotzamani pulls off as silkily as possible. Titanic Ocean brims with a mercurial force.