KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER
Starring Rinko Kikuchi
Directed by David Zellner
When Joel and Ethan Coen unveiled their grimly comic vision of their Midwest home in 1996’s Fargo, they likely didn’t anticipate that the bloodstained hinterland would possess such a seductive lure for viewers.
Long before Noah Hawley was compelled to revisit this treacherous terrain with his acclaimed miniseries of the same name, rumours arose concerning a Japanese tourist who ventured to Minnesota in search of the satchel of lucre that Steve Buscemi buried at the film’s climax. It’s this urban legend that inspired the Zellner brothers – writer-director David and writer-producer Nathan – to spin their own tragic fable about a fool’s errand.
As played by the captivating Rinko Kikuchi, one of the big screen’s most expressive performers, Kumiko is a despondent office drone in Japan who happens upon a VHS copy of Fargo through fantastical circumstances that both elevate it to a sacred relic and immediately call into question her grasp on reality. Given the latter, it’s unsurprising that she takes the film’s “based on a true story” assertion as gospel, brands herself a conquistador and sets off for a strange new world intent on retrieving the treasure she believes remains unclaimed.
Employing The Octopus Project's moody score to mesmeric effect, the Zellners masterfully depict a protagonist drifting between determination and desperation. Likewise, Sean Porter’s evocative cinematography creates a dreamlike milieu in which Kumiko seems capable of making Fargo and its eccentric denizens manifest through sheer force of delusional will. The resulting cinematic world is alternately silly and unsettling; an intoxicating realm that derives considerable tension from the fact that anything seems possible and yet our heroine’s fate seems heartbreakingly preordained. And as it spirals deeper into ambiguity, Kumiko serves as a testament to cinema’s sway.
