The recently bereaved Kenzaburo (Lily Franky), travels to the UK in order to scatter his late wife’s ashes in Lake Windermere accompanied by his son, Toshi (Ryo Nishikido), his wife, Satsuki (Rin Takanashi) and their daughter. Once in London, the fractious relationship between father and son intensifies leading to Kenzaburo deciding to fulfill his wife’s last wish by himself. He soon discovers that he needs help from strangers and family in order to achieve this, but will he be able to set aside his pride and accept their help?

The dual locations of the film, Japan, and the UK, allows Dickinson to draw our attention to the similarities, rather than the differences, of cultures despite the geographical distance between them. This is demonstrated through the use of Lake Windermere in the Lake District which offers the very qualities that are associated with Japan in the West, a place where solace can be found, wounds healed, and  enlightenment achieved. Famous as the backdrop to many of Beatrix Potter’s tales of Peter Rabbit, the cultural landscape of the Lake District is the UK’s only World Heritage site  (UNESCO: 2017) which is also a national park. It is no coincidence that the final scenes of the film take place there, or that we see the reconciled family chasing after a rabbit in a manner which mirrors that of Akiko’s childhood memories. In addition, the death of Akiko as a result of dementia, and its impact on the family, is a growing reality for many or will be in the future, and therefore is not a culturally specific event. 

Cottontail is Patrick Dickinson’s feature film directorial debut. And unlike many Western films the film does not construct Japan as a place of absolute difference between geishas and robots and other stereotypes. Cottontail’s slow pace, wide angled shots and usage of frames within frames signify Japaneseness at the level of cinematic art. It comes as no surprise that when studying in Japan, Dickinson was mentored by Donald Ritchie, one of the country’s best known Western cultural critics who wrote extensively about Japan and Japanese cinema.  Rather than telling us, Dickinson uses the camera to show us, making the viewer work to put the narrative pieces together. Sometimes, the gaze is denied by the structures of seeing constructed through the languid cinematography. This is the case for Akiko’s death. In hospital with her fretful husband by her side as the nurses attempt to control the pain, the camera removes the view from intruding on the couple’s last moments, to focus on the scene from the outside. By denying the viewer the spectacle of death, Akiko remains alive for both the intra-diegetic and extradiegetic spectator; the traumatic nature of her disease only accessible in snippets which hint at the reality of the devastation caused by dementia. Dickinson’s choice not to turn the camera lens on the condition itself allows us to experience the emotions of those affected by it including Akiko, who is omnipresent despite her limited screen time. We are offered snippets of conversations and fragments of events as the family come to terms with a devastating diagnosis, at a distance, as focalized through Kenzaburo as his journey to his wife’s final resting place becomes ever closer. 

Dickinson utilizes repetition in order to construct continuity between the past and the present. Akiko’s loss of herself in the past as dementia progresses is foregrounded in a series of fragmentary flashbacks and is mirrored through Kenzaburo’s inability to locate himself in the present: getting off the wrong train, he finds himself in the middle of nowhere, needing a map to orientate himself with his surroundings. This repeats an earlier event in London where Kenzaburo loses track of time and location while taking his granddaughter out on a walk. This suggests that a refusal to reconcile with the past will cause repetitions in the present, signifying an inability to come to terms with trauma. Further, the map on its own is useless for navigation if you do not know how to read it, insisting on the importance of translation between people, between cultures, and between languages. Here the mediators are a Welsh father,John  (Ciarán Hinds) and his daughter, Mary (Aoife Hinds) who have suffered a similar bereavement and whose farm Kenzaburo stumbles across when trying to find his way to the Lake District. While the father and daughter do not play a major part in terms of screen time in the film, they are another example of the use of repetition to construct similarities across cultures. Both bereaved men are depicted as unable to articulate their feelings at the loss of their partner. Their stoicism is an impediment to healing.

Cottontail is an impressive debut by Dickinson. He manages to escape the many traps of making a film that is set, or partly set, in Japan through the use of repetition to highlight similarities rather than differences. The film unfolds at a slow pace, but this is not an impediment to storytelling, but rather a vital component of the process. As such, the viewer is asked to feel the emotions of Kenzaburo as he struggles to come to terms with his wife’s death and to inhabit his perspective through the use of focalization.  

Lily Franky produces a mesmerising performance as the widower who cannot come to terms with the loss of his wife. The use of close-up shots juxtaposed with wide angled shots emphasizes his inner turmoil and isolation. And while dialogue is kept to a minimum, Lily Franky emotes through bodily posture and facial expression. Despite only appearing in it briefly, Tae Kimura as Akiko is memorable as the wife facing up to an unimaginable future. None of the other characters appear for long enough in the film to have much impact, except over the story. This is not criticism as the film centers on the emotional and physical journey of its protagonist, Kenzaburo. It is a heavy load for an actor, but Lily Frankly is more than up to the task and it is worth seeing the film for his performance on its own. It is also important to point out that such coproductions represent the future of cinema as spatial and temporal borders collapse.

It is a beautiful film, which is shot on anamorphic widescreen, and therefore should if possible be experienced on the big screen. Cottontail is in cinema now.

Rating:

Written by Dr Colette Balmain

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