Cot­ton­tail review – Lily Franky gives anoth­er stun­ning performance

In the intrigu­ing open­ing scenes of Cot­ton­tail, Ken­z­aburo (Lily Franky) sets out across Tokyo on a lit­tle mis­sion one ear­ly morn­ing. Sneak­i­ly swip­ing octo­pus cut­tings from a mar­ket stall, he takes his stolen pack­et to a favourite restau­rant before it’s even opened for the day, the famil­iar own­er hap­py to oblige his request to serve up the dish he’s brought in, paired with the finest beer they have. Despite being on his own, Ken­z­aburo asks for a sec­ond glass for the drink. Clink­ing both glass­es togeth­er and con­sum­ing the sushi trig­gers the arrival of a young woman at the entrance. As the blurred fig­ure approach­es and greets him, a quick cut brings us a close-up of a decades younger Ken­z­aburo (Kosei Kudo) patro­n­is­ing this same restaurant.

The woman (Yuri Tsune­mat­su) is the young ver­sion of his future wife, Akiko (Tae Kimu­ra), and this strange rit­u­al that old­er Ken­z­aburo has per­formed is an attempt to relive the blind date where they first met. This marks the first of writer-direc­tor Patrick Dickinson’s deft switch­es between past and present in a film built around the fleet­ing nature of mem­o­ry, as well as the reminders of our per­son­al his­to­ry that we leave behind for loved ones to fix­ate on – Akiko, we soon learn, has recent­ly died from dementia.

At Akiko’s funer­al, Ken­z­aburo receives a sur­prise let­ter from beyond the grave, via an enve­lope entrust­ed to an abbot until after she had passed. Due to her father’s work, Akiko trav­elled to Eng­land as a child, becom­ing fond of the books of Beat­rix Pot­ter and devel­op­ing cher­ished mem­o­ries of the Eng­lish coun­try­side that inspired them. In the let­ter, Akiko instructs both Ken­z­aburo and their thir­tysome­thing son Toshi (Ryo Nishiki­do) to trav­el to Lake Win­der­mere in Eng­land, so as to scat­ter her ash­es at the spot cap­tured in a pho­to­graph from her child­hood, the back of which has the cap­tion ​“Chas­ing a cottontail.”

Despite hon­our­ing his late wife in his own lit­tle ways, Ken­z­aburo seems less keen to respect her wish­es for father and estranged son to both over­see the release of her remains. While Toshi, his wife Sat­su­ki (Rin Takanashi) and young daugh­ter Emi (Hanii Hashimo­to) do accom­pa­ny Ken­z­aburo to Eng­land at Toshi’s insis­tence, the dis­tant old man keeps los­ing him­self in mem­o­ries of Akiko, impa­tient­ly depart­ing Lon­don on his own and becom­ing more lit­er­al­ly lost in a rur­al region he can nav­i­gate about as well as his fraught famil­ial relationships.

Report­ed­ly inspired by real dilem­mas and rela­tion­ships expe­ri­enced by Dick­in­son (mak­ing his fea­ture debut), the under­stat­ed Cot­ton­tail offers a bit­ter­sweet rumi­na­tion on loss and uncon­di­tion­al love. Much of its suc­cess is down to the grad­u­al­ly heart­break­ing per­for­mance of the ever-reli­able Franky, a reg­u­lar star for Hirokazu Koree­da. Dick­in­son makes par­tic­u­lar­ly sharp use of Franky’s extra­or­di­nary face, often opt­ing for close-ups in the 2.39:1 widescreen com­po­si­tions to keep Ken­z­aburo enclosed. It’s as though the wound­ed char­ac­ter him­self is stub­born­ly refus­ing to share cin­e­mat­ic space with oth­er peo­ple in the frame, deny­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for con­nec­tion despite ample room.