Cottontail review – life lessons are learnt in tender, Beatrix Potter-inspired tale
The curse of Beatrix Potter-associated cinema – from the lamentable Peter Rabbit films to the merely dismal Miss Potter – is lifted, at least temporarily, by the debut feature from Patrick Dickinson, even if his picture's relationship to Potter's work is purely tangential.
It was as a child on holiday in Windermere in the 1960s that Akiko (Tae Kimura) was first enchanted by the author's stories. After her death from Alzheimer's, her husband, the novelist and teacher Kenzaburo (Lily Franky), is given a letter written in the early stages of her diagnosis in which she asks him to travel from Tokyo to the Lake District to scatter her ashes in that cherished location. Though he has a strained relationship with their son, Toshi (Ryo Nishikido), Kenzaburo allows him and his family to come along on the emotional expedition, only to feel constrained by the timetable that Toshi imposes. Soon, the old man is off on his own, pedalling around the English countryside without a map.
Expanded by Dickinson from his 2013 short film Usagi-san (AKA Mr Rabbit), Cottontail is simultaneously tender and inconsequential, forever reaching for a profundity that remains beyond its grasp. Despite minor difficulties, everything pans out the way one would expect: father and son overcome their problems to become closer; friendships with benevolent strangers are kindled en route (including with a widowed farmer and his daughter, played by real-life father and daughter Ciarán and Aoife Hinds); and Windermere is eventually reached, the camera soaring just as the score does likewise.
The film is not without its rewards, mostly found in Andrew Javadji's editing, which allows past and present to flow gently into one another, and in Franky's understated performance as the widower not quite in touch with his family, his feelings or the world at large – but doing his best.
Cottontail is in UK and Irish cinemas from 14 February.
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