[KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER opens in Cleveland on Friday April 3rd exclusively at the Capitol Theatre.]
Review by Pamela Zoslov
Review by Pamela Zoslov
I was immersed in the first season of
Fargo, the television series based on the Coen Brothers'
landmark 1996 film, when KUMIKO,
THE TREASURE HUNTER fell into my hands. The film, directed
and co-written by David Zellner and his brother, Nathan,, explores
FARGO's
influence from a new angle: the supposedly true story of a
Japanese woman who froze to death in pursuit of the buried ransom
money shown in the movie. It's
strange, isn't it, that the Coens' bleak, snow-swept Minnesota
landscape, with its bland, folksy inhabitants, has inspired its own
mythos, still resounding nearly twenty years later.
The film centers on Kumiko, a Tokyo
woman of fertile imagination who is unhappily employed as an “Office
Lady,” or “OL.” Kumiko works for a nasty executive who makes
her perform menial tasks like picking up his dry cleaning, and chides
her for being an old spinster at 29. Kumiko takes subversive revenge
by spitting in her boss' daily tea. She doesn't fit in with the other
“OL” girls, who chatter on about makeup and marriage. Her mother
phones her frequently to chastise her for not dating and refusing to
move back home.
Kumiko imagines herself an explorer,
and one day she unearths a battered VHS tape of FARGO,
which she comes to believe contains important clues. A scene in which
kidnapers bury a valise full of cash particularly interests her, and
she determines that it's her mission to unearth the money. “I am
like a Spanish Conquistador,” she tells a library security man who
has caught her trying to steal an atlas. “I recently learned of
untold riches hidden deep in the Americas from an American motion
picture,” she asserts. “It's my destiny.”
Armed
with a hand-embroidered map and only a few words of English, Kumiko
takes off on her quest to Minnesota, USA, where she is helped by
various well-meaning, Coen-type Minnesotans who can't quite
understand why she's there. She crosses paths with a lonely widow,
who offers her a warm bed and tells her “solitude is just fancy
loneliness.” A kind sheriff's deputy tries to help her by buying
her a meal and a thrift-store parka. He tries to reason with her,
saying that the Coens' movie is “not real, just pretend, like
entertainment.” With its sensitive portraits of the denizens of
America's heartland, the story evokes not only FARGO but also
NEBRASKA, whose director, Alexander Payne, is a producer of this
film. Like Payne's film, it's the story of a naïf in implacable
pursuit of an illusory treasure.
Quiet, evocatively
photographed, and sensitively acted, it's an exquisite little film. As
Kumiko, Rinko Kikuchi (who was in BABEL) is marvelously restrained
and sympathetic, even when her character's behavior is beyond the
pale. The electronic score, by Austin, Texas' Octopus Project, adds
emotional resonance. 4 out of 4 stars.
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