Writer/Director: Nathan Zellner, David Zellner
Cast: Rinko Kikuchi, Nobuyuki Katsube, Shirley Venard, David Zellner, Nathan Zellnar,
The surreal collides with the banal in Nathan and David Kellner’s genre-blurring black comedy drama, in which the directors also star. Kumiko, a doltishly passive Japanese woman, abandons her dull life as a secretary in Tokyo to travel to snowbound Minnesota, on the strength of an imagined treasure trove she sees buried in a field somewhere outside Mineapolis, while watching a scratchy DVD. She is aided and abetted by the kindness of the local countryfolk who help her on her mission and provide humorous texture to this quirky but endearing road movie. If you can suspend your disbelief and tune into the weird humour, this is a work of inspired genius and well-planned eccentricity: Alexander Payne put his money into it and the Kellner Brothers’ drama has shades of Joel and Ethan Coen about it. MT 105min.
REVIEWED DURING BERLINALE 2014 | FORUM
ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 20 FEBRUARY 2015