Insutanto numa (Instant Swamp)

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Audience Member Helped by Kumiko Aso giving a wonderful lead performance as the neurotic Haname, who seems to accidentally bypass all the wonder in life, and with a typical Satoshi Miki list of fantastically quirky side characters, this is nothing if not charming. Although there are some great comedy moments along the way, this film works best as the relatable story of a character finding wonder in a life that usually disappoints and leaves her behind. By the third act the film seems to lose a bit of the initial direction and energy, but has a feel good twist on par with "A Wonderful Life". Although not a perfectly paced film, I think you would need a heart of stone to not walk out of this feeling a million times better then when you walked in. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 01/30/23 Full Review Audience Member Had it's moments, but couldn't call this one a favourite. About half an hour too long and doesn't make sense in places. Still, lead character with her swampy Milo addiction was sweet. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/22/23 Full Review Audience Member Satoshi Miki's Instant Swamp (Insutanto Numa) is a bizarre but delicious little Japanese confection. Haname Jinchoge, a twenty-something woman, is trying to make her way in the world, but everything goes wrong; her life is "eroding" from beneath her. The magazine she works for fails; the photographer she fancies moves to Milan; she loses her pet rabbit; she is trapped in the humdrum when all she wants to do is run and scream (as they sometimes do, she observes, in independent films, but real life doesn't work that way). Haname is, as her mother scolds, five seconds late for everything. Haname's only consistent pleasure is her morning cup of (prefigurative) chocolate sludge, made from a precise recipe of too much chocolate powder and too little milk. Although she claims to be a sceptic, Haname attributes her bad fortune to the curse of a cat talisman that she threw into a swamp on her eighth birthday (she so disposed of everything her father had given her, because he chose that day to leave the family for a rich woman and the easy life). And it is this tension between the mundane and the fantastic that drives the story frenetically forward, through surprising and sometimes silly twists involving water sprites, sunken post boxes, a comatose mother, an itinerant lost father, a punk rocker, a dragon, and, yes, even an instant swamp. But the film is always engaging and consistently amusing, from its rocket-paced opening montage until Haname announces the moral of the story (as if we didn't know) at the end. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/31/23 Full Review Audience Member This is a great, hilarious, weird movie. It's one of my favourites now. Watch it if you get the chance. (On account of Kumiko Aso also being in Pulse, I may just give that movie another go...) Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/17/23 Full Review Audience Member Sorry to my wife. Bad choice and i fell asleep. Rated 0.5/5 Stars •  Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 02/11/23 Full Review Audience Member I loved this it's potty Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/02/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Insutanto numa (Instant Swamp)

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