Review for The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker

Introduction

Not since I reviewed The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension have I so been threatened by repetitive strain injury in writing a review. The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker is certainly a handful to be kicking off a new year of film reviews, but if Fish Story, the previous film from director Yoshihiro Nakamura to be released in the UK is any indication, risking my tendons in aid of a review is going to be well worth it. Besides, this is Third Window Films’ first release of 2013, a typically quirky Japanese film, and as usual quirky means that I haven’t the slightest idea of what to expect. Fish Story was about the end of the world and a punk song, a fractured narrative tying four stories in four time periods together. The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker also has a song at the heart of its narrative, but the story is completely different, if still with a challenging structure.


Shiina moves to Sendai to attend university, and like any newcomer to a new city, he finds it an impersonal experience. He takes his parents’ advice and tries introducing himself to his neighbours. But the first door he knocks on houses a rather withdrawn and rude man. He timidly gives up, and returns to unpacking his belongings, singing a little Bob Dylan as he works. It’s his other neighbour who recognises the song and introduces himself. Kawasaki has been waiting for someone like Shiina to turn up, and bonding over Dylan he asks for Shiina’s help. It turns out that his other neighbour isn’t rude, he’s foreign. Kinley Dorje is from Bhutan, and he’s uncommunicative because of the language barrier, and he’s withdrawn because of a failed relationship. Kawasaki wants to help him, and to do that he wants to get him a dictionary. He needs Shiina to be the lookout while he raids the bookstore. That’s just the beginning of a very strange series of events.

Picture

The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker gets a 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer on an NTSC disc. It’s a progressive transfer that offers true 24 fps playback on compatible equipment and the resulting image is very agreeable. It’s a film source, with a light layer of grain, and just the odd fleck of dirt. Otherwise the image is clear and sharp throughout, with a subdued and realistic colour palette. About the only complaint is that blacks are a little faded in a few scenes, but otherwise the film comes across without issue.

Sound

The sole audio track is a DD 2.0 Stereo Japanese track with optional English subtitles. The dialogue is clear throughout, and the audio is sufficient in putting a dialogue heavy film across. The film gets a gentle and simple music soundtrack that adds poignancy and a touch of melancholy to the story, while Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind features prominently. The subtitles are accurately timed, and mostly free of error, except for a couple of instances that escaped the spellchecker, “dosing” instead of “dozing”, and “form” instead of “from”. The layer change could have been better placed.

Extras

The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker is presented with animated menus, where you get the option to select scenes, and play the film with or without subtitles.

In the Features submenu, you’ll find the trailer for the film, and a TWF weblink. You’ll also find 17 minutes worth of deleted scenes, videotape footage bookended by the scenes in the film from where it is excised. You’ll also find a nice 35-minute long Making Of, which features interviews with the cast and the director and some b-roll footage. There’s discussion of the complexity of the script, and a look at how the actors managed to find room to improvise. It’s a nice featurette and well worth watching.

Conclusion

The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker is just the perfect remedy for two weeks of holiday entertainment. Just as the body needs a detox and a workout to shift several kilograms of turkey and sprouts, the grey matter also needs to have the toxins generated by two weeks of banal Christmas entertainment, and mainstream blockbuster movies cleansed by a film with wit, heart, and a plot that makes you think. I watched this film, and not only was I thoroughly entertained, engrossed in a masterful piece of storytelling, with engaging characters and a quirky but moving tale, but I also felt my IQ jump up a few percentage points as I was made to work at the story, and had to think to figure it out.


I also get to use my favourite reviewer get out of jail free card at this point. I can’t tell you much about the story as it will completely spoil it for you. This is a film that has to be discovered for yourself, you have to be the one to uncover its secrets. In that respect it is like Fish Story before (or rather after) it, and films like Memento and Pulp Fiction. In The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker however, it’s not the narrative that is fractured so much as it is perceptions and viewpoints.


The film starts off deceptively light and frivolous, with a dose of gentle and eccentric humour, but it sows seeds of its themes from the off, with its exploration of alienation and being the outsider. When it introduces Shiina as the newcomer to Sendai, moving there to start college, he looks to all intents and purposes like a country boy coming to the big city for the first time, despite him coming from Tokyo. He’s a little awestruck at the size of the place and the impersonal nature of the people around him, and he finds that making friends isn’t easy. That’s reinforced by the foreign contingent in the area, and most typified by his Bhutanese neighbour. It’s a little ironic then, that he’s reluctant to get to know his other neighbour Kawasaki, although I guess reluctance is a logical response when someone asks you to help rob a bookstore.


It’s all in a good cause though, a desire to help the Bhutanese Kinley Dorje come out of his withdrawn isolation. It’s when Shiina asks Kawasaki why the dictionary has to be stolen, and not just purchased that Kawasaki reveals an unexpected and surprising tale. He also warns Shiina to avoid a local pet shop owner named Reiko, and to mistrust whatever she tells him. Kawasaki begins to tell Kinley’s story to Shiina, and it starts as a light and gentle romantic tale, but one which takes on a rather sad, reflective and even ominous tone, explaining just why Kinley Dorje is so isolated and withdrawn. Soon Shiina is convinced to help Kawasaki with his little bookstore larceny.


Of course it’s inevitable that Shiina would eventually encounter Reiko, and ignoring Kawasaki’s warning he winds up talking to her. It turns out that she too knows Kinley Dorje and Kawasaki, and she knows Kinley’s story. Only she knows it differently to Kawasaki.


The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker may start off light and frivolous, but it takes the viewer on an emotive and often dark ride, as it explores its characters and reveals their stories. It’s full of surprises, artfully constructed, with some great performances. But above all it holds onto its emotional core and the result is moving, both saddening and uplifting. It’s a film that makes you think, but it also makes you feel for its characters, and in that The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker may just be an even bigger triumph than Fish Story. Third Window Films starts off 2013 in the best possible way, with a film that ought to be in every collection.