Synopsis
A truck carrying a huge stuffed whale arrives at a small town in Austria. The whale's owner who was driving the truck dies suddenly and whale now awaits its inheritor.
One day, a wedding is to take place in the town. The bride does not show up and the groom declares he would wait until she comes to the scene. Then an attractive young woman appears, claiming herself as the inheritor of the whale. The woman and the groom go into the inside of the whale and from that time on strange things happen.
This is the 10th full-length movie directed by the Romanian-born Robert Dornhelm now active in the United States and Austria. Description of the small rural town and its surroundings is meticulous while the story is fantastic, and the two contrasting factors create a peculiar atmosphere. The matter-of-course manner of linking the reality with fantasy may have been borrowed from the magical realism of Latin America and the satire on avarice and stupidity is appropriate. The inside of the whale may symbolize many meaningful things, but a nice way of enjoying this film would be following the story with ease as if reading a fairytale for adults, not digging into the hidden meaning. This film is like a cocktail of fantasy, humor and eroticism.
P.S.: "Unfish" means something which is not a fish. In other words, it means whale that looks like a fish but is not. (Hong-ju Kim)