Water and blood.
A strange man, who lives with his parents, starts working at a bathhouse where people are getting killed. He becomes a part of this business and falls in love with a woman who doesn’t know about his secret bathhouse life.
“Melancholic” is a low-budget Japanese movie that follows a slacker who doesn’t do anything with his life. He has a face that you want to punch hard, and even though he graduated from Tokyo University, he doesn’t seem to be a smart man. His face could remind me of a Japanese Jeffrey Dahmer. They both have punchable faces!
By coincidence, he starts working for an old man who runs a bathhouse. One night, he sees a man killed by one of the employees. He gets caught while peeping, and the owner and the employee, who is a killer for the yakuza, decide to spare the loser’s life, and he starts helping them. So, we follow him and the small crew at the bathhouse who work for the yakuza.
Then the slacker meets a woman whom he went to school with. They fall in love, and the slacker enjoys his life, taking responsibility at the bathhouse when people have been murdered, so he can go home and “f” the prom queen. But when you play with fire, you must expect to get burned. Is the slacker ready for the burning?
“Melancholic” isn’t a movie for everyone. It isn’t a movie for people who can’t stand small, low-budget movies that have a limited universe and not much dialogue.
I enjoyed “Melancholic” more than I thought I would. The acting is decent, and the most important thing is the group chemistry between the characters who work at the bathhouse. They create great chemistry, and you start to care about two of them who work there and don’t seem like bad men. But in the end, the protagonist still has a face that deserves punishment.
The last 20 minutes don’t hold the same quality as the rest of the movie. The director doesn’t manage to create a satisfying ending. The last scene is okay, and it fits with the vibe of the movie. But before that, there is an important incident that didn’t work. I can’t say more than that, but it felt so strange this choice.
“Melancholic” has an interesting story to tell. It could have been a great movie with some changes to the script and a more likable protagonist who didn’t have such a punchable face. It’s a movie with a special type of atmosphere. It’s a movie about friendship and finding people you like, and that means something to you.