Recommended Movie: Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers

Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers (亀は意外と速く泳ぐ) follows the story of Suzume Katakura (Juri Ueno) a young housewife that has an absolutely boring life and sometimes she even feels that is invisible and is slowly disappearing. Her name Suzume means sparrow, an ordinary bird. But things change when she finds a hidden advertisement  about recruiting spies.

Suzume meets Etsuko and Shizuo (Eri Fuse and Ryo Iwamatsu), a strange couple that hire her and tell her that she needs to wait for her first mission as a spy. But until that day arrives, she can’t act suspicious. So she needs to act as ordinary as possible.

Juri Ueno is great as Suzume. She can be silly, funny and helpless naturally. Actually, all actors are great. An interesting fact is that in most of Satoshi Miki’s movies you will find actors Eri Fuse and Ryo Iwamatsu.

I love Satoshi Miki’s silly sense of humor and how he can skillfully mix drama and comedy. Other movies directed by him that I recommend are:  図鑑に載ってない虫(The Insects Unlisted in the Encyclopedia / Deathfix: Die and Let Live) and 転々(Adrift in Tokyo).

Miki’s latest movie is called “It’s Me, It’s Me” (俺俺). I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t tell if it’s good or not, but it looks interesting.