Coming Soon
KOTOKO
2011
Director
Shinya Tsukamoto
Starring
Cocco
Shinya Tsukamoto
Yuko Nakamura
Runtime
91 MINUTES
Select Showtime to Purchase Tickets
Select Showtimes
“Cocco and Tsukamoto bring a sensitivity and sympathy that softens the blow and makes even the most grim moments beautiful.”—Dave Jackson, Letterboxd
Co-written and directed by Shinya Tsukamoto (TETSUO: THE IRON MAN), KOTOKO is a nightmarish and hallucinogenic feast for the senses from Japan’s most consistently irreverent genre filmmaker. Kotoko (pop star and co-writer Cocco, in her first starring role) is a mother struggling to raise her young son Daijiro. As her grip on reality lessens, Kotoko begins to see doubles of everyone — one good, and one evil. Unfortunately, she can’t tell which one is real. As Kotoko’s life devolves into a paranoia-induced state, a famous author (played by Tsukamoto) takes an interest in her… for better or worse.
“The extreme brutality of Kotoko’s self-harm and Tanaka’s disfigurement borders on the grotesque—this is in line with the emotional realism embodied in the physicality of characters in other Tsukamoto movies like TOKYO FIST. In KOTOKO, however, the wounds are not emblems of exploration, transformation, or even a release of explosive angst leading the character to experience jouissance. Instead, they represent the desperation and isolation mothers experience, dealt with as a last-ditch Hail Mary of sorts—an attempt to experience the living force of the body by a psyche weary of life.”—Mahim Lakhani
Co-written and directed by Shinya Tsukamoto (TETSUO: THE IRON MAN), KOTOKO is a nightmarish and hallucinogenic feast for the senses from Japan’s most consistently irreverent genre filmmaker. Kotoko (pop star and co-writer Cocco, in her first starring role) is a mother struggling to raise her young son Daijiro. As her grip on reality lessens, Kotoko begins to see doubles of everyone — one good, and one evil. Unfortunately, she can’t tell which one is real. As Kotoko’s life devolves into a paranoia-induced state, a famous author (played by Tsukamoto) takes an interest in her… for better or worse.
“The extreme brutality of Kotoko’s self-harm and Tanaka’s disfigurement borders on the grotesque—this is in line with the emotional realism embodied in the physicality of characters in other Tsukamoto movies like TOKYO FIST. In KOTOKO, however, the wounds are not emblems of exploration, transformation, or even a release of explosive angst leading the character to experience jouissance. Instead, they represent the desperation and isolation mothers experience, dealt with as a last-ditch Hail Mary of sorts—an attempt to experience the living force of the body by a psyche weary of life.”—Mahim Lakhani