Koko-di Koko-da (2019)

[Prison Biscuits]

I watched this film this morning and it's haunted me all day. Anyone else seen it?

It's a Swedish film - I'll put the synopsis in spoilers just in case, I went in blind and you might like to - about

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a couple who, three years after their daughter dies suddenly, go on a camping trip where they are terrorised and humiliated over and over by three creepy circus sideshow characters in a Groundhog Day style time loop.

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It was such a harrowing, moving and really odd little film. I'm not good at writing about films, but a few reviews I read online have used all the usual adjcetives like 'Lynchian' etc. You know, because it's a bit weird and non linear and allegorical.

Anyway, ignore that. I found myself in tears watching this film,

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during a really beautiful shadow puppet show that illustrates the couple and the death of their daughter through a family of rabbits where 'death' is a rooster and in their grief they hunt it down.

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As with a lot of foreign language films, I have the feeling I missed out on some cultural references (

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the title is a reference to a Swedish folk song, I believe but I don't know if the 'family' who were stalking them were part of that; also didn't really understand what the white cat was there for, unless it was just a signifier of weird shit is about to go dow

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n) but still, not that difficult to follow what was going on.

Really quite something. It's not often I sit and watch a film without some distraction, but this captivated me.

[BlodwynPig]

life goes on

[Prison Biscuits]

If you watch the film, that is a very appropriate summary!

[BlodwynPig]

If you watch the film, that is a very appropriate summary!

bror

[Zetetic]

Blodwyn, when you respond to a post with 'precis' is this a quote from the final scenes of Låt den rätte komma in (2008)?

Prison Biscuits, apologies for the tangent to your thread. I'll probably watch this film based on your post, but since I haven't yet and have avoided spoilers on your suggestion, I can't contribute anything better.

[BlodwynPig]

yn union

+ this looks right up my alley. Is it only on Shudder?

[Prison Biscuits]

Prison Biscuits, apologies for the tangent to your thread. I'll probably watch this film based on your post, but since I haven't yet and have avoided spoilers on your suggestion, I can't contribute anything better.

Sorry I couldn't provide a more detailed OP - it's one of those films that are best not knowing too much about beforehand.

[phantom_power]

yn union

+ this looks right up my alley. Is it only on Shudder?

It's also on the BFI Player and Amazon channel

[chveik]

lol https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,76259.msg4006214.html#msg4006214

i have yet to watch it...

[Zetetic]

It's also on the BFI Player

Was just about to post that it's covered under the subscription.

(I'm actually watching it via a

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torrent from the 'Bay and recognised the cat from a thumbnail

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.)

[zomgmouse]

I hated this film, thought it was pretty insufferable and unoriginal (except maybe the shadow puppet stuff)

[Prison Biscuits]

I hated this film, thought it was pretty insufferable and unoriginal (except maybe the shadow puppet stuff)

What did you think was insufferable and unoriginal about it?

[zomgmouse]

What did you think was insufferable and unoriginal about it?

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Grief

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as metaphor is pretty overdone so it has to be executed quite exceptionally for it to work for me, and unfortunately I didn't feel like that was the case here, especially when it was laid so bare (though not as bad as when there's a big "twist" that reveals the whole thing is actually a

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grief

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metaphor

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e.g. The Machinist, Goodnight Mommy

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). The repetitive nature was obviously inbuilt into the plot but it became grating. And the "villain" characters just seemed like empty weirdos.

[BlodwynPig]

lol https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,76259.msg4006214.html#msg4006214

i have yet to watch it...

christ, I made the same 'joke' too

[Zetetic]

I found the conclusion very insipid - they

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don't do anything to overcome their grief and the gap it's created between them. They just get in a car and ... keep driving (away), Elin wetting herself, and they hit the white dog, and but it still reads - to me anyway - as having escaped

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. I'd be interested what anyone else took from that.

(I'm extraordinarily pleased by clangingly didactic metaphor. I've no issue with that.)

[Prison Biscuits]

Spoiler alert

Grief

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as metaphor is pretty overdone so it has to be executed quite exceptionally for it to work for me, and unfortunately I didn't feel like that was the case here, especially when it was laid so bare

Fair enough, and thanks for replying. I found it interesting that

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the first four times or so when the scenario plays out, it's from Tobias the husband's perspective, and it's brutal, punishing, his wife is killed and he does nothing to help her (he even abandons her and hides in the car at one point) as if he's wanting to blame her, but when we see it from Elin's perspective, in her 'vision'/'dream', she's alone, Tobias has abandoned her, no one is being punished, but she's lead to the puppet show where we get a sense of moving on, leting it go and not trying to find something or someone to blame (the rooster dying and then becoming a phoenix - pretty cliched but beautifully done, I thought).

Also, I don't think the three weirdos in the woods are meant to have any more depth to them than the rabbits in the shadow play - they're just the characters taken off the daughter's music box, they're just cartoon villains tormenting the parents repeatedly.

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[Prison Biscuits]

I found the conclusion very insipid

Yeah, I didn't really like the end either but I took to just mean that

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they're not necessarily getting over their grief, more like breaking the cycle (by killing the dog that was already dead) of blame/anger/whatever. They're supporting each other instead of fighting or shutting the other out.

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