For the entirety of my
viewing of Netflix’s latest adult drama Fishbowl
Wives (2022) I compared myself endlessly to the pensioner Mrs. Glick from
The Simpsons. Anyone else remember the scene where Bart is at her house weeding
the garden to raise some pocket money and Mrs. Glick is sat in her armchair
watching a steamy day-time soap opera and commenting “filthy… but genuinely
arousing”?
This eight-part
Japanese drama, inspired by Ryo Kurasawa’s 2017 manga series of the same name,
will have you sitting there Mrs. Glick Style with your knitting (as I very much
was) picking your jaw back up off the floor and praying no other member of your
family walks in on you watching such smut.
But Fishbowl Wives is compelling, heartfelt
smut. Set in “The Heights”, an ultra-glamorous multi-storey Tokyo apartment complex. The secret misery and despair of the complexes married denizens is
hidden well behind a mask of outward success and affluence. King and Queen of
Living a Lie are the Hiraga family.
Chain hair-salon
owning extraordinaire power couple Sakura Hiraga (played by the warm and
engaging Ryoko Shinohara) and her charming, handsome husband Takuya (played by
Masanobu Ando, best known as Kazuo Kiriyama in Kinji Fukasaku’sBattle Royale) are equal parts envied
and adored by fellow residents of “The Heights”. A beautiful pair of goldfish
swimming around a shining bowl for all to admire, but the water within is
dangerously dirty.
The viewer soon learns
that their relationship is more akin to that of Julia Roberts and Patrick
Bergin’s in Sleeping withthe Enemy.
Takuya is a serial womanizer and gaslighting wife beater. How much more will
Sakura put up with before she’s pushed to breaking point? Isn’t there anyone
who can help her find the natural strength and resilience inside her to take
back control of her life?
Cue Sakura’s goofily
adorable extra-marital love interest HarutoKazama. Haruto owns the local
goldfish shop and has more than a few skeletons in his closet, but will face
them all if it means he can be with Sakura, who he genuinely loves. However,
loving another man’s wife is risky business at the best of times, especially
when the wife is viewed by the husband as a personal possession and punching
bag for the sole use of the husband.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that Takuya is not going to be receptive to having another man take his toy out of his sandbox.
Featuring disturbing
scenes of sexual assault and domestic violence, the Sakura/Takuya/Harutolove
triangle is the central pillar storyline. It’s a plot provokes strong reactions
as a Westerner to the Japanese attitudes towards, and divorce laws governing,
those trapped in violent marriages. Divorce, regardless of the circumstances,
is still considered shameful.
Less shameful than
divorce, apparently, is infidelity. If there’s no shame in infidelity, then let
me tell you, the other “Goldfish Wives” of the show are living proud as punch.
There’s Bento Wife whose husband gets a little more
than he bargains for when bringing in a third party to their bedroom. There’s Outsourcing Wife, who reasons that if
her husband won’t give her the baby she so yearns for, someone else can.
The Running Wife thinks that her husband is running away with her life and now she’s
left with an identity that doesn’t belong to her. A desperate act of cheating is the only path to communication
and ultimate reconciliation.
And Renovation
Wife, an adulterous, raging bitch at the best of times, cowed by an
overbearing mother-in-law and high maintenance husband, finds solace and
self-acceptance in the arms of a damaged contractor.
Over-seeing, and
openly encouraging these wives to stray and find both emotional and sexual
satisfaction from whatever source they can is resident mystic Mei. Is Mei
really psychic? Or does she just like seeing women take back some control over
their own destinies and break free from the social constraints trapping all these goldfish women in ill-fitting
bowls?
Beautifully shot,
clever “fishbowl” style camera work, exquisite lighting to capture and reflect
moods, gorgeous musical underscore and rife with metaphor and social commentary,
Fishbowl Wives is a gripping drama
that is as heart-breaking as it is heart-racing. Imagine… a sexually explicit Desperate Housewives with meatier plots
and considerably better acting.
This won’t be for
everyone. I enjoyed it immensely, it was
hard to watch at times and not every
minute of the show is flawless. But, if you’re looking for an
excuse to melodramatically gasp and cry “Escandalo!” at the T.V. while clapping
your hand to your cheek - then this is the show for you.
5 stars from Straight Outta Kanto!
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