Things I watched: Josee, the Tiger and the Fish – A disappointing comedy about off-beat youngsters

Sometimes a film appears on my watchlist and I have absolutely no idea how it got there. That was the case with Josee, the Tiger and the Fish, a Japanese romantic comedy from 2003. It’s also… not very good, and I spent most of its runtime wondering if I’d meant to watch the animated remake instead.

The story centres on Tsuneo, a boisterous student who befriends Josee, a young woman with a serious physical disability. Early scenes focus on their unconventional friendship: Tsuneo enjoying her cooking, gifting her books she can’t easily get hold of, and generally orbiting her small, restricted world. Inevitably, this slides into romance — though not before Tsuneo weighs up whether he prefers Josee or a more conventionally attractive student.

That hesitation is handled clumsily and veers into something faintly misogynistic. The film never really explains why Tsuneo is such a prize in the first place. Apparently he just… is.

Very little truly held my attention beyond a vague curiosity about where the plot was heading. As one IMDB reviewer put it, the film circles around several interesting ideas without ever committing to any of them. I felt that keenly. 

There’s a moment late on where Josee speaks about being discarded by society because of her condition — a genuinely compelling thread — only for the film to cut away and never return to it.

Oh well. Sometimes the algorithm misses.