Appropriate Adult

   The lurid lives of Fred and Rosemary West have been documented in half a dozen books including 'Happy Like Murderers' (Gordon Burn), 'The Corpse Garden' (Colin Wilson) , 'Fred and Rose' (Howard Sounes), and 'An Evil Love' (Geoffrey Wansell), my favorite of the bunch. The British thriller, Mum and Dad, was an impressionistic take on elements of the story. It focused on the couple's psychopathic dynamic without directly identifying them.  Several documentaries have been doing the rounds on the telly and on youtube. Now and then, authentic Fred audio leaks out to interested parties, of which I am one. As far as 20th century criminality goes, the West story is right up there with Manson, The Moors Murderers, The Monster of the Andes (Pedro Lopez), Gacy, Dahmer, and more recently, the Jaycee Dugard/Phillip and Nancy Garrido case, and that of Austria's Joseph Fritzl, who imprisoned and raped his daughter for decades (and fathered children with her).  Considering the depth, breadth, and lengthy time frame of the Wests' crimes against women, children, and the unborn, there is a mother lode of perverted drama to draw on for filmmakers and writers.

Britain's ITV has broadcast a take on the story from an "appropriate" point of view. Appropriate Adult is an example of how you do Fred and Rose on TV without offending 99% of your audience. A truly literal movie would be closer to Tim Roth's The War Game mixed with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Deep Crimson, and Serbian Film.  You'd also need to weave in some of the most extreme Euro porn from the 70's such as Kilroy Was Here (one of Fred's favorites) and the German Violence and Slave Sex series. I'd also suggest, just for tone, you toss in some live action 'Antoine Bernhard' (look him up on this blog). In today's tender market, where something like Serbian Film is being banned and cut around the world, a graphic tale of Fred and Rose West is likely to remain the untold story.

 The producers of Appropriate Adult were clearly aware of all of the above, so, still determined to tell the story, chose an interesting point of view.  In Britain, if a person is being charged with a crime, and it has been determined that that person has learning difficulties and may be unable to comprehend what they are being charged with, an Appropriate Adult (AA) is assigned to them. In Fred's case, the AA was Janet Leach (Emily Watson), a woman whose previous experience was academic only. Needless to say, her time with the serial killer became a fiery baptism.

 Taking Janet's point of view, we only see what Janet sees when Fred is being questioned and charged,  but we also get to hear what Fred shares with Janet when the cops are out of the room or distracted. It is what Fred shares discreetly with Janet that provides the film with its more incendiary drama. Janet develops a strange, somewhat dependent relationship with Fred while he appears to be smitten with aspects of her that remind him of his true love, Anna McFall -- I say "appears" because we're never quite sure whether Fred is playing Janet for a fool or is sincere in his affection for her.  This ambiguity keeps the drama bouncing.

Although there are some visits to the house where Fred and Rose lived, loved, raped and murdered, this TV movie is mostly set in a police station and prison. Although it's quite talky, it's never less than fascinating in its limited way because West (played with enormous subtlety by Dominic West) is a compelling character, a man of contradictions who elicits both sympathy (at times) and hatred. We get to see the charmer who managed to charm the pants off the women he ultimately raped and killed. And, although it's not covered in this extremely abbreviated version of almost thirty years of mind-boggling events, West also charmed the police into believing that accusations and suspicions thrown at him were a bunch of hysterical hogwash. He was accused of raping and kidnapping years before close to a dozen charges finally stuck, but he always weaseled his way out of anything serious and happily carried on as a devoted husband to Rose and father to a brood of children whose numbers he was personally reducing in his basement.

Naturally, Appropriate Adult soft pedals Fred's true nature to easily offended TV viewers, so a rather distorted, milky picture of him emerges. The truth is, he raped his daughter Heather for most of her lifetime, and would accuse her of being a lesbian when she attempted to reject his advances. Heather's body was also shared by Fred with his brother John, who happily took Fred's rape baton. He was eventually charged. The majority of Fred's children were sexually abused or forced to witness the abuse that was commonplace in the West household, a household that was closer to a Sadean brothel than a home sweet home.  Fred was also obsessed with corpses and raped his way through the ones he created, often playing with and souveniring body parts. Because none of this is covered in Appropriate Adult "(Don't mention the war or the corpses!") , the picture we get of the man is extremely controlled and not a little inaccurate. What service such sanitization of character provides is a little uncertain to me, and this is where I found Appropriate Adult problematic.

If you want to tell a story about a shocking crime, is it appropriate to underplay the shocking aspects of that crime when it is the shocking aspects (and their implications) that made it notorious, and extraordinary, in the first place? To me, it's a little like having your cake and eating it, too -- you exploit the public's hunger for horror to reel them in, but you refuse to indulge their appetite for it when you've got them in your hand. It's the old bait and switch. I know the commercial reasons for it, but commercial reasons for anything have nothing to do with what may be right. 

 Because I know the Fred and Rose story inside out, I felt a bit cheated by the Fred and Rose Lite we get here. Although Dominic West (playing Fred) and  Monica Dolan (chilling as Rose) are totally convincing, and, yes, the production is a handsome and well written one, I wanted to see so much more, especially how Fred and Rose interacted as a couple before they were imprisoned and separated. That, to me, is what's interesting. But there is little here of  that 'Evil Love', that special connection, that inseparable partnership in which they experienced crazy love as husband and wife, parents, killers, rapists, and sexual adventurers. What kind of love survives that? What kind of love is strengthened by that? That's what's truly fascinating. That's the untold story so far.

The Fish Rots From the Head Down

Let me start with "This is a great fucking film" because it's the most adequate, all-encompassing  piece of praise I can think of.

Two weeks ago, I rose at 5 am and quickly  prepared a breakfast of Quinoa Flakes, blueberries, stevia, pineapple, and hemp milk. Excited, I slipped the (British) Third Window Films' Blu-ray into my player, took a seat, dug my spoon into the Quinoa, and waited for Cold Fish (Tsumetai nettaigyo, 2010), the second latest film from Japan's Sion Sono, to unfold.

Would it remain a film, as most do, or would it bolt from the pack and become an experience?

Before I placed the empty, blueberry-stained bowl on the tray beside me at 5:22 am, the film had already become an experience and more.

On the rear sleeve of the Blu-ray, it is described as "a psychotic cavalcade of sex, violence, and comedy".  It's much more than that, of course, but a little simplification doesn't go astray now and then. Director Sono's skill is in balancing the elements and building a strong foundation for them that is his characters.

 There's no arguing that Sono has found some very strong ones in this deliciously vile outing.  

The launching place for Cold Fish is a true story known as "The Saitama serial murders of dog lovers". A married couple, both professional dog breeders, sold overpriced dogs to a variety of people, including some yakuza types. When it became apparent that they'd been ripped off by the breeders, the unhappy customers complained. The couple addressed these complaints with murder. It's said that they murdered at least ten people.

In the script by Sion Sono and Yoshiki Takahashi (who also designed the striking, Straw Dogs-inspired poster art), the dog breeders have become fish breeders, and the climax has been changed completely. But according to crime journalist Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice,  the film follows the tenor and details of the original crimes very closely -- at least up to the point where it veers into very different thematic territory.

Shamato, who runs a tropical fish shop with his second wife, is put at a disadvantage when his bratty daughter, Mitsuko, is caught shoplifting. When it seems likely that the store's angry manager will call the police, a kind stranger (fish shop entrepreneur Murata), intervenes on the girl's behalf and smooths matters with the manager, negating police intervention. This apparent act of kindness turns Shamato into grateful, humbled putty in Murata's murderous hands.

The original killers, Gen Sekine and Kirokoo Kazama, become Murata (played with chilling conviction and humor by Denden) and his wife Taeko (Megumi Kagurazaka) here. Like Sekine, Murata  is a charming, charismatic rogue whose ability to manipulate those around him is a wicked joy to witness. As audience members, we know where it's all heading, but it's the machinations of his manipulation that are so fascinating. His greatest skill lies in forming bonds separately with each member of Shamato's family. Mitsuko, for one, detests her father and stepmother. When Murata offers to drive her home in his shiny red sports car, he encourages her to disparage her father in the meanest, most disrespectful way. This encouragement endears Murata to her, and puts her at ease with him (all the better to molest her later). Not too much later, Murata catches Shamato's wife Taeko in a vulnerable moment and deviously molests her, groping her breasts and crotch. When he drops her home after an afternoon of lurid intimacy, it's clear that he opened a door into Taeko's psyche (and body) that Shamato lost the key to long ago.

In a series of brilliant master strokes, the shockingly brazen Murata takes informal custody of Mitsuko, endears himself to Taeko, and involves Shamato in a murderous spree from which the psychologically beaten husband and father feels incapable of escaping.

I'm loathe to reveal too many more plot developments, of which there are plenty, because Cold Fish's plot surprises are just some of its bountiful joys; even greater joy, for me, at least, is derived from its approach to sexuality and thorough examination of what asserting your true nature actually means.

Not since directors Masaru Konuma (Wife To Be Sacrificed, Erotic Diary of an Office Lady) and Norifumi Suzuki (Beautiful Girl Hunter, School of the holy Beast) has a Japanese filmmaker approached the subject of  sexuality (and violence) as freshly and thoughtfully as Sono. Although he doesn't make what anybody would call "pink films", he incorporates pink film elements such as extreme fetishism and sadomasochism seamlessly into his scenarios.

Outside of pornography, sexuality and its broader expression (fetishism) is usually bundled (lazily) into the "perversion" basket. For mine, "perversion" is an abstract moral judgment of a particular sexual act provoked subconsciously by religious dogma. It's a meaningless word flung around by repressed, terrified, immature idiots who wouldn't know a human psyche from a hole in the ground. Because "perversion" is used in the West as a banner for sexual acts outside the "norm" (read: admitted to), and has negative religious associations, we're rarely treated to a thought-provoking, Western exploration of it. In Japan, where Christianity hasn't hijacked young minds and old ways, sex is more easily explored for the brilliant, shattering, euphoric force it can be (if you're game). In one of Cold Fish's most mind-blowing sequences, a violent confrontation between Murata and a yakuza gang is intercut with Murata's wife groping the hired help in a nearby closet. The juxtaposition of two forms of fiery passion (anger and lust) creates an atmosphere rarely seen or felt in cinema, and the impact on the viewer is incendiary (on this viewer, anyway). The audaciousness of the scene reminded me of Sono's previous film, Love Exposure  (reviewed on this blog), a work that explored fetishism, romance, and the dangers of religious faith.... and, like Cold Fish, balanced the often disparate elements with unbridled skill and gleeful abandon.

When Cold Fish detours from its source, it does so to address thematic issues. From the outset, its hero Shamato is a beaten man. Tensions between his daughter and her stepmother are high. Shamato has lost control of them, their mutual hatred a gulf in the family home.  Murata's intervention into their lives is not initially an unwelcome one. It rattles the family, wakes them from their domestic slumber, gives them an pronounced electric charge. Naturally, heaven turns to hell (which is simple physics), and Shamato's feeble grasp on everything becomes more pronounced. Eventually, he becomes Murata's puppet, more an abused son than a business colleague, and his unassertive ways threaten to bury him (literally). And then there's the detour, where the true story falls away and Sono asserts his theme.

The detour is about Shamato gaining control. I hesitate to write "regaining" because I'm not sure if he ever had it. In Japan, there is an entire genre of literature about fathers being beaten up by their wives and children; "Stupid Dad" is one of these. To varying degrees, the Dads of this genre are idiots (?) who work all day and have no relationship with their children. Their lives are of servitude to spoiled ingrates. For their efforts, they gets punished. For performing the traditional "duty" of bread winner, they get hung, burnt, stabbed, and dismembered. In Cold Fish, Shamato is Sono's "Stupid Dad", a man physically and psychologically beaten by the people he's supposed to protect. Unable to moderate the war between the two fighting females in his household, he's retired to a room in his head where the weather conditions outside can not touch him. When Murata enters Shamato's life, Shamato is happy to pass the "Stupid Dad" baton to him. When Shamato finally takes the baton back, the result is bloody and somewhat surprising. Not only does Shamato confront his abuser, but he asserts his fatherly role via several brutal acts of violence against his own family. These acts provide an incredible catharsis for him and the viewer, and represent a full reversal of the "Stupid Dad" genre.

For me, what makes Cold Fish great is its original, ballsy approach to hot material. It takes a line and walks it. It doesn't stop along the way to fuck, piss, protest, or suck a producer's dick. That's rare.

 Enthusiasts for Fred and Rose West (I know you're out there!) and the Moors Murderers (you, too!) will find much gristle to chew on here.

An interesting tidbit ripped from the Blu-ray extras is that the yakuza were instrumental in the conviction of the real life murderers. Their unconventional interview methods uncovered information the police couldn't. 

***

The Third Window Films Blu-ray of Cold Fish is a stellar presentation of the work.

Extras include an interview with co-writer Yoshiki Takahashi and crime journalist Jake Adelstein, who once met the actual murderers the film is based on.