COTTONTAIL - Mark Reviews Movies

Cottontail, Level 33 Entertainment

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | June 6, 2024

Grief somehow seems deeper and more difficult for Kenzaburo (Lily Franky), whose wife died less than a year ago. Cottontail tracks that grief, the couple's relationship, the wife's descent into neurological illness, and an unexpected trip from Tokyo to England, and while writer/director Patrick Dickinson's film may be doing a lot in a short amount of time, it possesses an emotional through line that gradually uncovers why our main characters appears to be stuck in place.

All we know at that start is that Kenzaburo's mind remains on his wife Akiko (Tae Kimura in flashbacks to more recent times). When we're first introduced to the man, it's the day that would have been the couple's wedding anniversary.

He fulfills their old tradition of eating octopus (which he steals from a market out of sad desperation) at the restaurant where they had their first date decades ago. The owner knows Kenzaburo and asks about the wife, whom he hasn't seen in some time, but the widower just sits, eating his meal, toasting a beer to an empty space, and imagining the first time he saw a young Akiko (played by Yuri Tsunematsu) enter the restaurant, changing his life.

At the time, neither of them could have known how that meeting would go and what it would bring, and Dickinson's story in both the past and the present is filled with such significant moments that, at the time, feel as if they could be quite ordinary. A younger Kenzaburo (played by Kosei Kudo) and his blind date just talk about their lives. He's a writer, still working on being published beyond a literary magazine, and an English teacher to pay the bills, and Akiko wears a rabbit pendant around her neck—a reminder of her father, who worked in England, and her time there with both of her parents. Something clicks between them, and that's the start of a life together.

In the present day, of course, the story is focused on the end of that life. A retired Kenzaburo doesn't do much but drink these days and spend an isolated existence in his apartment. He has an adult son named Toshi (Ryo Nishikido), who has a wife and child of his own, but a distance has grown between the father and son. Kenzaburo insists he doesn't want to get in the way of Toshi's family and worries that his son isn't interested in spending time with him. None of that makes much sense, though, because Toshi is there for him later, keeps telling his father to call whenever he needs or wants to, and makes a significant decision soon enough.

That's a trip to England with his father. Akiko left a letter for her husband before her illness took hold, requesting that the family travel to a particular lake in that country to spread her ashes. Kenzaburo says he'll do it on his own, but before he can arrange anything, Toshi and his wife Satsuki (Rin Takanashi) have already booked a flight to London and train trek to the lake for the entire family.

The success of this little but compelling tale is Dickinson's dedication to maintaining Kenzaburo's perspective throughout the film. It never leaves him physically or mentally, keeping tabs on his journey, which becomes a solo one against the protests of his son, and staying with him as the man's mind wanders to what have now become the defining moments of his marriage.

In those memories, there are no more happy times for the two after their first encounter. One is at a different restaurant, after Akiko visited a doctor and was left with a pamphlet about dementia. She explains that everything will be all right, but Kenzaburo can only stare at page after page of an older cartoon couple, smiling on the cover but being overwhelmed by demons, inexplicable bouts of anger and depression, and the loneliness of having and being close to the disease. Like the rest of the film, that scene is tranquil in its tone, because neither of them really knows what's coming and how this moment, especially a conversation to which we're not privy, will matter so much until much later.

The whole of the film revolves around that idea—from the flashbacks to the very memory, reflected in a photograph of Akiko as a child with her parents by that English lake, that spurs this journey after Akiko has died. Kenzaburo becomes lost in the English countryside, walking and riding a rented bike in search of the lake, and in his thoughts of Akiko's deterioration.

He meets a local man named John (Ciarán Hinds), whose own wife died a few years ago, and the man's daughter Mary (Aoife Hinds, who is indeed the real-life daughter of the actor playing her father). The two strangers are generally kind and specifically helpful about mourning in ways that Kenzaburo might take to heart or, because of the unspoken reason for the depth of his grief, reject.

Dickinson eventually reveals that secret—the moment that truly defines who Kenzaburo is now, why he's trapped in his sense of loss, and how it has put what he believes to be an unbreakable wall between him and his son. The subdued, intimate approach of Cottontail makes that revelation quite painful, because we understand this character's mindset so well. In the same regard, the film's final moments are quite affecting in a different register, because the filmmaker has dedicated so much of the narrative to the idea of memories being made, kept, and passed along without even noticing it happening.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products