Kumiko The Treasure Hunter (4 Stars)

First I'd like to make a few short remarks about the film's title. There's no comma. There's no colon. It's exactly as shown above in the poster, "Kumiko The Treasure Hunter". That might seem like a grammatical error, but the director David Zellner says that he put a lot of thought into the use of the comma and finally decided against it. Unfortunately, everyone has chosen to ignore his wishes. The Blu-ray disc in my hand has a comma after "Kumiko", the IMDB page uses a comma, and the English Wikipedia page uses a comma. He says he wants to imitate the title of "Aguirre The Wrath Of God", in which no comma is used. Really? I've used commas in my reviews of the film, but I rushed to check my Blu-ray (the German edition), and there it is: "Aguirre Der Zorn Gottes", without a comma or colon. That would normally be incorrect in German as well. English releases are inconsistent; some use a comma, some don't.

The connection with "Aguirre" is no coincidence. In the film Kumiko compares herself with a Spanish Conquistador. I didn't listen to the director's commentary until after I watched the film, but now I can see the underlying similarities. If you compare Kumiko with Aguirre, in her moods and her determination, the director's vision becomes clearer.

Kumiko is 29 and lives in a small apartment in Tokyo with her rabbit Bunzo. Her life is dreary. Her office job is boring, and after work she eats pot noodles in the dark. Nothing interests her, until she finds a video tape buried in a cave by the beach. It's the film "Fargo". She watches it, and she's convinced that it's a true story. In the film a suitcase is buried containing a million dollars. Kumiko wants to find the money, even though it's on the other side of the world.

Kumiko flies to Minneapolis using a stolen company credit card. She has no idea of the distance involved. Fargo is 250 miles from the airport. She's so impatient to reach her goal that when her bus breaks down and has to wait for repair, she doesn't wait, she attempts to walk the rest of the distance on foot.

The film has the slow-burning style of the Cohen Brothers films, and could almost be called a sequel to "Fargo", but it adds other elements. Her journey through America, particularly the people that she meets on the way, reminds me of Nicolas Cage's journey in "Wild at Heart". It's not an easy movie to watch, but the beautiful cinematography more than makes up for the slow pace.

The only question I have to ask myself is why Kumiko even cares about finding the money. She shows so little interest in her life that I can't imagine what she would want to spend the money on. A bigger house for eating pot noodles? It seems that the treasure hunt is the goal in itself. She thinks that if she can find the treasure it will prove to everyone, especially herself, that she can achieve something. I can imagine her finding the suitcase with the money, then putting it on a pedestal, never wanting to spend it.

	Order from Amazon.com
	Order from Amazon.co.uk