Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (2014)

KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: David Zellner
    Rinko Kikuchi, Noboyuki Katsube, Shirley Venard,
    David Zellner, Kanako Higashi, Ichi Kyokaku
Kumiko (Rinko Kikuchi) is a 29-year-old office drone living in a dingy flat in Tokyo, alone except for a pet rabbit named Bunzo. When you first see her at the start of the film, she's walking along a black sand beach, studying what appears to be a homemade treasure map. The map leads her to a cave, where she digs up a waterlogged VHS copy of the Coen Brothers movie "Fargo". The tape is barely playable, but she uses it, and later a DVD, to study the scene where Steve Buscemi stashes the suitcase full of money in the snow. She becomes convinced it's her destiny to go to America and find the money. So she does. What this movie is really is a character study with a protagonist who's mentally ill. At home in Tokyo, she's functionally delusional. In Minnesota in the dead of winter, she's a lost soul, Red Riding Hood walking the frozen highways wrapped in a bulky, multi-colored blanket, relentless in her pursuit of a treasure that only she believes is real. In the end she finds transcendence in the only way transcendence can really be found. Some might think the ending's not a happy one, considering where Kumiko seems to end up, but it is. It is.