
Run time: 94 mins
(Subtitled)
Cottontail is a poignant tale of a Japanese widower taking his wife’s ashes to England on a final journey. It is a film about love and regret and trying to renew family bonds.
Lily Franky (Shoplifters) is Kenzaburo, our solemn tour guide through the Japanese way of death. A struggling novelist, he finds plenty of reasons to flash back to memories of how he met his beloved Akiko (Tae Kimura), treasuring the shy allure that drew him in, regretting the ways he let her down and not wanting to share this last request from the son (Ryô Nishikido) and daughter-in-law (Rin Takanashi) he kept at arm’s length during Akiko’s long decline.
He embarks on his solo journey to Lake Windermere. “The kindness of strangers” includes meeting an aged farmer (Ciarán Hinds) and his daughter (Aoife Hinds), people who, it turns out, have a special understanding of this quest.
The film transcends its nostalgic trappings to make sublime, understated points about the way grief empties you out and doesn’t always bring surviving families close together. It captures not just the differences in cultural approaches to death, but the universal nature of grief