Review: Cottontail – “Deeply emotional and rather beautiful.”

Cottontail (Japanese title:コットンテール),
Directed by Patrick Dickinson
Starring Lily Franky, Ryo Nishikido, Tae Kimura, Rin Takanashi, Ciarán Hinds, Aoife Hinds

We open with Kenzaburo (Lily Franky, aka illustrator, writer and actor Masaya Nakagawa), rather listless, rudderless, walking slowly up the stairs of his apartment building, emerging onto the roof, drink in hand. Except he doesn’t really appear to be seeing the city he is gazing over – he has that thousand yard stare of one whose mind is far removed from where their physical body finds itself. We follow him to a fish market, then to a nearby small restaurant and bar that is his regular haunt, the chef greeting him by name, and preparing the octopus he brought from the market, as Kenzaburo explains he and his wife always have this on their anniversary.

Despite being alone, he calls for the good beer and two glasses, which he fills as the food cooks behind the counter, and this is our first hint at why Kenzaburo is so remote, almost on auto pilot: his wife is gone, and her funeral is soon. Franky underplays Kenzaburo perfectly – any of us who have experienced that horrific grief that comes with such loss, will recognise it and empathise with it, that feeling that you are looking out from behind your eyes as if from a telescope somewhere far away from where you body is, the feeling of unreality that the world is turning around you and everyday tasks are happening as people busily go around their lives, while you feel as if your world has stopped.

We get the first flashback, a device Dickinson uses throughout the film, to see how a young Kenzaburo met his future wife, Akiko (Tae Kimura), a first date in the exact same bar, sitting at the same stools he is at now. It comes across as very real, the awkwardness of two very young people, clearly interested in each other but not sure what to do or say, gently trying to find ways to connect, it’s rather sweet. The director will use this flashback device several times, with one in particular where he remembers his wife so strongly that he turns on the park bench he is sitting on and sees her sitting there. Again any of us who have experienced that sort of loss (and sadly that is something we pretty much all endure at some point in our lives) will empathise with the character.

His son, Toshi (Ryo Nishikido) arrives at his parent’s apartment a little later, chiding his father who is sitting their unkempt, for not being ready – the funeral is about to take place as the temple, and he makes his reluctant father shave and clean himself, even doing up his tie for him, while his father mutters why does it matter. It is after the funeral that the priest comes to them with a letter that Akiko had entrusted to him some time before. She was developing Alzheimer’s, and so wrote a letter to them while, as she puts it, she can still remember them and who she is. She had spent her childhood years in England with her parents, and had fallen in love with the beauty of the Lake District, and the works of Beatrix Potter, and she wishes them to take her ashes to be scattered in Lake Windermere.

This will provide the main drive for the narrative, as Kenzaburo and Toshi, along with Toshi’s wife (Rin Takanshi) and young daughter travel to the UK to fulfil this request. As the film unfolds we see that Kenzaburo was detached from things even before his wife’s death, and barely talks to his son – even less since Akikio’s illness, decline and death, and you get the strong impression Akiko was hurt by this and perhaps the trip with her ashes isn’t just a final request, it is also a mother and wife reaching out from beyond death to try and put her husband and son back together again.

Kenzaburo is still stubborn, and detached from the feelings of the others around him – he was reluctant to even have his son and family come with him to begin with, and he soon leaves them to strike out on his own from London to Windermere, despite having limited English and not really knowing where he is going, but driven to reach there, carrying his small bag that contains the jar with Akiko’s ashes. Lost, he stumbles across a farmhouse run by John (Ciarán Hinds) and his daughter Mary (Ciarán’s real-life daughter, Aoife Hinds). John is a gruff farmer, Mary more open and welcoming, but even John softens, recognising not just a man lost and needing help in a strange land, but a man lost in grief and in danger of losing his connection to his remaining family too.

The entire film is played quite gently, and as I said, many moments will feel all too familiar to anyone who has endured the lost of a dearly loved one, yet it never feels either too morose nor does it veer into too-sweet territory, taking a fine line between them that feels quite true to life. In some places, it reminded me of The Tale of One Bad Rat, by Bryan Talbot, a superb graphic novel about an injured young woman who also finds healing through Beatrix Potter and the beauty of the Lakes. Cottontail is gentle, and yet deeply emotional, and rather beautiful.

Cottontail is in UK and Irish cinemas from February 14th.