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★★☆☆☆
26 March 2014
This article is a review of KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER.Seen at the Berlin International Film Festival 2014. (For more information, click here.)
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“I am like a Spanish conquistador,” Kumiko (Rinko Kikuchi)
Some movies are too quirky for their own good. Whenever KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER has an opportunity to offer up something wise or believable, the narrative opts for tedious idiosyncrasy. A shame, as leading lady Kikuchi is an engaging presence. Wasting her skills is not just the preserve of indiedom, 2013 should have been Rinko’s breakout year, but PACIFIC RIM and 47 RONIN turned out to be utter duds. (Here’s hoping for her team up with Juliette Binoche and director Isabel Coixet in NOBODY WANTS THE NIGHT).
Some movies are too quirky for their own good. Whenever KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER has an opportunity to offer up something wise or believable, the narrative opts for tedious idiosyncrasy. A shame, as leading lady Kikuchi is an engaging presence. Wasting her skills is not just the preserve of indiedom, 2013 should have been Rinko’s breakout year, but PACIFIC RIM and 47 RONIN turned out to be utter duds. (Here’s hoping for her team up with Juliette Binoche and director Isabel Coixet in NOBODY WANTS THE NIGHT).
We are told this is a true story in titles over scratchy video feed. Obvs it isn’t. Wearing a Red Riding Hood-style scarlet coat, Kumiko is on the beach holding a cloth treasure map. Away from the shore, in a cave, a V.H.S. cassette is buried and unearthed. Avoiding taking us down THE RING genre horrifics, the video is not the bounty in itself, merely a clue. Guess what’s on the tape? I (sportsman) bet you cannot! That’s right, it’s a worn out copy of the Coen brothers’ FARGO. Told you. There is the increased sensation that Kumiko actually created the whole scenario; especially as when she pauses the video on Steve Buscemi’s Carl Showalter burying the suitcase of cash, she sticks a piece of paper to the TV, traces the fence in the snowy landscape where the film crew shot FARGO, marks where the loot is hidden, and then sows a cloth map depicting the trove as filmed.
Breaking with reality, envisioning an escape through discovering hidden movie money, is suffused in offbeat mildly amusing visual gags; a tone sitting uneasily amidst an audience armchair diagnosis of depression. Kumiko is a 29-year-old office drone, in a Tokyo company of uniformly dressed women talking about eyelashes on their lunch break, where the boss sits around playing with desk baubles. An atmosphere of 1970s work hierarchy (i.e. pre-equal rights for the sexes) is hammered home by Kumiko’s mother constantly bemoaning her lack of marital status.
Finally reaching the end of her tether, and stealing the boss’s corporate credit card, a trip to Minnesota, America to fulfil an unspoken destiny shifts the film into kooky overload (walking around with a butchered motel bedspread as a poncho, anyone?). Too obtuse to want to empathise, Kumiko’s actions rarely make much sense. Even if that is the intention, the experience is a frustrating one. Executive produced by Alexander Payne, KUMIKO, THE TREAURE HUNTER exudes his worst traits of whimsy not anchored to insight or emotional heft.
