- Title: In Love and Deep Water
- IMDb: link
Set on a cruise ship, In Love and Deep Water merges a romcom about a pair of jilted lovers who come together after realizing their significant others are cheating with a murder mystery aboard the ship. The romcom angle works fairly well with the life of the buttoned-down butler (Ryô Yoshizawa) thrown into chaos after the arrival of Chizuru (Aoi Miyazaki) who showed up to catch her boyfriend and Suguru’s girlfriend together only to realize to late that the pair aren’t on the ship and finding herself stuck on the cruise for several days. The pair bond over both their misfortune and investigating the murder which occurs on the ship (which is where the film runs into problems).
The convoluted murder plot, further complicated by no witnesses backing up Suguru’s account to the ship’s captain, even against their own self-interest, requires an entire new subset of characters whose actions and motivations over the course of the film range from questionable to outright dumb.
On the plus side, the film has some chemistry working between the slowly developing feelings of its two stars, and the cruise ship setting gives the story a unique location and feel. Already bonded by being cheated on by each other’s partners, the film doesn’t really need the murder mystery to bring them together. The only real purpose it serves is to get Suguru temporarily suspended to spend more time with Chizuru, but an overreaction to the infidelity of his fiancé-to-be could have accomplished the same thing with far less chicanery and plot holes. As a result, In Love and Deep Water struggles to keep afloat while being weighed down by its bloated screenplay.
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