A businessman kills his adulterous wife and is sent to prison. After his release, he opens a barbershop and meets new people, talking to almost no one except for an eel he befriended while in prison.
Direction
Imamura finds poetry in the grotesque and redemption in mud.
Acting
Koji Yakusho's face does more than most scripts.
Director
Shōhei Imamura
Koji Yakusho
Takuro Yamashita
Misa Shimizu
Keiko Hattori
Akira Emoto
Tamotsu Takasaki
Fujio Tokita
Jiro Nakajima
Mitsuko Baisho
Misako Nakajima
Show Aikawa
Yuji Nozawa
Ken Kobayashi
Masaki Saito
Sabu Kawahara
Seitaro Misato
Etsuko Ichihara
Fumie Hattori
Tomorowo Taguchi
Eiji Dojima
Chiho Terada
Emiko Yamashita
Sanshō Shinsui
Doctor
Koichi Ueda
Detective Keiji
Ken Mitsuishi
Detective
Hiroyuki Konishi
Medical Examiner
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Won the Palme d'Or at Cannes 1997, though Imamura famously said he didn't understand why audiences found it funny.
The eel symbolizes masculine emotional inaccessibility in Japanese culture — Takuro literally cannot speak without its proxy presence.
JP
