Kotoko (film)

A single mother, Kotoko struggles to care for her infant son, Daijiro, while suffering from Hallucinations that cause her to see violent doubles of people she meets. She regularly practices self-harm, due to a fascination with her body's will to live, and finds that her hallucinations only cease while she is singing.

After having a breakdown while trying to cook a meal, Daijiro is taken away to be raised by Kotokos sister and her family. During a bus ride to visit them, her singing catches the attention of a man.

While standing on the roof of her building, she's approached by the same man and after a hallucination involving him, he reassures her that he doesn't mean her any harm and reveals that he's an award-winning novelist named Tanaka Seitaro.

Tanaka asks Kotoko if she'd be willing to date him but Kotoko stabs his hand with a fork in response. she rebuffs his advances until one night she sees him accept an award on TV. She reads his new book andsoon after agrees to go on a date with him. One night, Tanaka rushes over to Kotoko's apartment and finds her slitting her wrists. he fetches towels for her, and when she recovers, he proposes marriage to her but she refuses and forces him out of her apartment.

Upon returning, he finds Kotoko self-harming again. She flees the apartment and screams at Tanaka that she is a terrible person. He tries to reassure her that whatever she might have done in her past does not matter and that she is a good person now. He then suggests they should visit daijiro together, which they do. During the visit, Kotoko tells her sister that she intends to be happy from now on.

Tanaka eventually moves in with Kotoko where they have a volatile relationship. She then performs a song for Tanaka, which brings both of them to tears.

Kotoko returns home from work one day to find a letter from her sister which says Daijiro is being returned to her, as Kotoko is considered to finally be rehabilitated. She rushes to tell Tanaka, but finds no trace of him in her apartment. She welcomes Daijiro upon his return, but Kotoko is once again despondent and hallucinates a duplicate of him. Her inability to distinguish which is her real child seemingly results in Daijiro stabbing himself in the eye with a pencil.

Kotoko hallucinates a soldier entering her apartment and shooting Daijiro in the head. Not wanting to see any other strangers hurt her son, Kotoko tries to strangle him in his sleep but hallucinates herself in a Cardboard replica of the room with sculptures and a doll in place of Daijiro. Sometime later, Kotoko (now in a mental institution) is visited by Daijiro (still alive and now a teenager), who tells her about his life and makes her a Paper Swan before leaving.

• Cocco as Kotoko
• Shinya Tsukamoto as Tanaka Seitaro

Kotoko premiered at the 68th Venice International Film Festival where it won the Best Film award in the festival's Orizzonti section, the first Japanese film to do so.^[2]

The film was picked up for distribution in the UK by Third Window Films and was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on October 8, 2012.^[3]

The film was re-released alongside Tsukamoto’s other films on Blu-ray by Arrow Video as part of the Solid Metal Nightmares Boxset.^[4]