Kotoko

As harrowing as it is heartbreaking, Kotoko concerns a single mother struggling to raise her infant child due to her deteriorating mental illness, and delivers moments of pure terror by blurring the lines between reality & imagination throughout its runtime. A hallucinatory horror drama packed with violent episodes that erupt without warning, the film navigates motherhood, loneliness, nervous breakdowns, toxic relationship, self-harm & more with a confounding narrative that neither makes sense nor carries enough weight and leaves the viewers with more questions than answers in the end. Cocco's unhinged performance in the titular role does much of the heavy lifting here but the film as a whole requires more than one viewing to properly unearth its multitudes of layers & mysteries.

After seeing many of Shinya Tsukamoto's films, I always found many of them interesting yet they always seemed a bit much. This film to me took all of the good from his previous work and left all the negatives behind. This felt like a collaboration made in heaven Cocco and Shinya made a great pairing. I felt genuine emotion from this film. Even though at times it may be over the top it always finds its way back to being grounded. This is a confusing film but in a good way. I don't throw 10/10 around Willy nilly but this film deserves it.

This is quite an unknown film, in fact I know of no one who has actually even heard of this let alone seen it. Therefore, I'm braving new territory. I'm pleased to report that this is exceptional filmmaking. A young single mother suffers from a mental illness that enables her to see double, questioning what is reality and what is fantasy. Tsukamoto has achieved excellence with Kotoko. He is able to convey the solitude and disparity of a fractured mind with visceral filming techniques. The transition from slow camera movements to explosive shakiness (albeit over accentuating that movement slightly too much) highlights the violence that she suppresses and unfortunately succumbs to. There is self-harming. There are visions of horrific imagery that no parent (or anybody) would ever want to see. Yet, it's imperative that these are shown. The complexity of her illness makes her a liability, her eventual loneliness only worsens the situation and I believe it's important that the bloody violence conveys that raw emotion. You feel helpless watching her. Both the internal and external struggles of this rare psychological detriment are explicitly portrayed where all of your emotions are drained. This is a relentless drama, and I admire the personable perspective. A feature film debut for singer-songwriter Cocco who delivers an outstanding performance. There is a stunning one take scene of her belting out a melancholic song, and I was transfixed. She held my gaze, grabbing my eyes and refusing to let go. Just masterful. The loud piercing noises throughout increases the broken nightmarish reality that she lives. The story does lack some attention towards the psychological aspects of this illness, where certain scenes do feel slightly too ambiguous for its own good. Also, a vision involving her son towards the end was too violent. However Tsukamoto's heartbreaking drama remains grounded throughout and holds one of the best debut performances I've seen. It's not an easy watch, but do check this out and give it some adoration.

Tormented by frightening visions, a single mother who struggles to take care of herself and her newborn child realizes that the key to figuring out how to save herself is with a new relationship only to realize her madness hasn't left her and is always close to being fully unleashed on others.

This was a fantastic effort with a lot to enjoy about it. One of the finest aspects of the film is the strength of the central character who has so much going on that she's worthy of being this kind of central figure. Being given such a strong personality, the film gets quite a lot of mileage out of her. The torment she feels trying to raise her child alone in the city causes such stress and frustration that she frequently daydreams about killing it to start her life over, so the peace and tranquility she feels being around her sister out in the countryside is a welcome relief contrasting with the cold city scenes. To top it off, she also struggles with an ability to separate fantasy from reality where she constantly imagines evil doppelgangers of those around her who often viciously attack her that forces her into a self-destructive pattern of self-mutilation and creates an overall frantic central premise here. Still, this one doesn't forget it's a horror film at its heart so there are plenty of fantastic scares here. These revolve around the doppelganger attacks which are striking and utterly haunting here with frantic editing, chaotic sounds blaring along through the sequence and a dark intent behind them rushing towards her, these scenes leave a strong impression with the feverish intent and frequency that they're featured in the first half. There's a brutality on display here with the way these occur which gives this a striking tone and feel that goes hand-in-hand with the madness she displays, which is furthered by the scenes of her cutting herself or the way she beats up those that try to get between her and child as this is quite the dark and frantic tale. While these here offer up plenty to like, the film does have a few minor issues on display. The vast majority of the film is a character study so those expecting traditional jump-scares or slashings will be disappointed. This takes it's time to tell this story, so although the horror scenes do occur and are absolutely stellar during those times, frankly the film doesn't have that much else going on. It still moves along well but it's mostly brief spurts of action followed by other scenes that focus on her madness and lost sanity so the action doesn't get featured here at all. This can leave the film feeling dull for long stretches of time to some which really is the main problem.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Language and scenes of violence towards children.

I find it sad that this provocative, challenging film has such a low rating. This is a film about a serious subject (mental illness) that is portrayed through intense visuals and expressionistic performance. The director positions you so that you feel like you are inside the characters head and its a very distressing place to be. There is strong violence and the film is very tragic but there are also moments of beauty such as when Cocco sings and dances. Yes, the camera work is very "shaky" buy the purpose is to create a realism and disorientation as experienced by the character. If the film had been shot formally it would have lost its impact. This is not a film for mainstream cinema fans. It is a challenging and artistic piece of work that deserves serious attention.