Waterboys

Toronto International Film Festival Program Guide
2001

Waterboys
Shinobu Yaguchi
JAPAN, 2001
90 minutes Colour/35mm
Production Company: Altamira Pictures/ Fuji Television/Toho/Dentsu
Executive Producer: Shoji Masui
Producer: Akifumi Takuma, Daiske Sekiguchi
Screenplay: Shinobu Yaguchi
Cinematographer: Yuichi Nagata
Editor: Ryuji Miyajima
Production Designer: Takeshi Shimizu
Sound: Hiromichi Kori
Music: Gakuji Matsuda
Principal Cast: Satoshi Tsumabuki, Hiroshi Tamaki, Akifumi Miura, Kuen Kondo, Naoto Takenaka
Production: Altamira Pictures

Shinobu Yaguchi’s previous films (including Down the Drain and Adrenaline Drive) have all been funny in a kind of dark, zany way, their screwball antics kept in check by a veneer of arty cool. Well, forget the cool: Waterboys is a flat-out gut-buster from the first pratfall to the jaw-dropping, show-stopping synchronized swimming musical finale. This is cinema at its broadest. Not that the film isn’t rife with subtext—it pushes the inherent homoeroticism and sexual politics of the teen comedy to the breaking point—but you’ll be laughing too hard to notice until later.

It’s springtime and the Tadano High School swim team is down to one member named Suzuki (the impossibly adorable Satoshi Tsumabuki) and the filthiest pool in Japan. A pretty young coach shows up with the idea of creating the top synchronized swimming team in the country. But she faces some problems—Tadano is an all-boys school and she is only able to interest five hopelessly bad swimmers, including Suzuki, in taking part. When she discovers she is eight months pregnant and takes off for maternity leave, the team seems doomed.

But they persevere in the face of derision from fellow classmates, the mounting pressure of college exams and constant failure. Their only support comes from a gaggle of local drag queens and the crazy owner of a local aquarium (Naoto Takenaka, the toupée aficionado from Shall We Dance), who ultimately takes on the team’s coaching duties in order to exploit the labour. Of course, all turns out well as it must in such a film.

Yaguchi has never featured gay characters in his films before, but here they literally leap off the screen, from the team’s shortest member to the rowdy queens buying up all the tickets to their show. Ultimately, Yaguchi embraces the obvious—when you’ve got a bunch of teenaged boys in swimming trunks engaged in the girliest sport around, there are some issues you just can’t avoid!
—Noah Cowan