Titanic Ocean (2026) Movie Review: Atmospheric Mermaid School set coming-of-age film transforms into a prosaic exercise of familiar tropes 

Greek filmmaker Konstantina Kotzamani’s debut film “Titanic Ocean” is aware that identity is an ever-changing phenomenon. The fluidity with which it keeps shuffling in a person, especially in a young adult, is unprecedented and hard to capture in its exact implications. Which is why, filmmakers, for decades, have used the lens of teenage angst and fear to dilute its exact fluidity through fantasy or a metaphor that helps unravel it on the screen. 

Kotzamnai’s film, which is almost entirely set in – and I am not kidding – a Mermaid School where young girls train hard to learn to be literal mermaids, also happens to distill this fluid idea of identity within the context of a competition where they have to strive to be the absolute best. The boarding school type setup feels like an elusive, dream-like universe that the filmmaker carefully constructs. 

The first 30-odd minutes open with the J-Pop-infused world where the young girls can not just pick a placeholder mermaid name for themselves, but also figure out their own mermaid routine, their voice, and choose the color of their hair. And of course, the Greek filmmaker is more than willing to use all of these elements to trace the metamorphosis of her protagonist, Akame (Arisa Sasaki), who goes by the mermaid-name Deep Sea. 

Deep Sea is the kind of distant youngster who happens to listen and absorb everything, but when it’s time to emote, she is unable to find the words to express what she feels. Within the school itself, her personality is defined more by the people around her than by her actions. There is no moral grey area that the filmmaker wants to specifically claw on, but pretty early into the movie, we realize that these girls have not been allowed to have a personality because competing for the mermaid competition is the only thing they know of.

Now, the problem with a mostly muted protagonist at the centre of a coming-of-age tale is that the filmmaker has to rely heavily on constant voice-overs that translate the inner feelings of the person in question. The tragedy about Akame trying to find her voice while competing to be the best mermaid in the academy, simultaneously understanding her sexual awakening, is a compelling narrative direction – especially considering all the transformations are sketched over the canvas of water, the idea of constant fear, and the destructive nature of holding your breath for too long. 

But these broad metaphors about Akame’s identity are stretched out over a 2-hour, 10-minute-long story with vibe-over-substance interludes. The idea of Deep Sea and her camaraderie with Yokohama Blue (Kotone Hanase), her relationship with coach Kotaro (Masahiro Higashide), and corporate exploitation of young, fragile youth keep the heady cocktail of themes intact for a while. However, the film loses itself to its lacklustre pacing that wishes to mash Japanese culture’s extreme workholic nature with the Greek mythology of sirens without hanging it on interesting plot points. 

The entire movie thus becomes a chore to sit through, navigating the extremities of its darker craveses without as much as leaving a ripple effect. It’s hard to come out of a film about female identity in a nation where every single person faces the downside of urban loneliness – unscathed, but “Titanic Ocean” is such an emotionally distant oddity that it leaves so much potential on the table – making the viewer feel extremely disappointed. 

Titanic Ocean screened at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival

Titanic Ocean (2026) Movie Links: IMDb, Letterboxd, Cannes