Executive Koala (2005)

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Director: Minoru Kawasaki

Screenplay: Minoru Kawasaki and Masakazu Migita

Cast: Lee Ho; Eiichi Kikuchi; Arthur Kuroda; Shôko Nakagawa; Hironobu Nomura; Hideki Saijô; Hitomi Takashima

Synopsis: Tamura is a hard working employee at a pickle company. His wife vanished years ago and his new girlfriend has been murdered. Frequent visits to his psychiatrist leave him trying to negotiate his own emotional turmoil whilst a police detective is obsessed with him being guilty for both incidents. Tamura is also an anthropomorphised koala bear.

Loving boyfriend. Diligent employee. Possible psychopath with a split personality. Koala bear. Executive Koala does eventually slip up in the end by becoming too silly with its premise, but when it's trying to take itself more seriously before, even the jokes the film throws in doesn't detach from this low budget, digitally shot film succeed. It plays out like a peculiar mix of a low-fi drama about a koala bear working for a pickle company, and a tone with fake dream sequences which inexplicably evokes when Brian De Palma is at his most playful and intentionally ridiculous. You could imagine this as Raising Cain (1992) if John Lithgow wore an animal head throughout the narrative.

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At one point, Minoru Kawasaki gained attention in the West for his peculiar obsession with anthropomorphised animals and aquatic creatures participating in human activities. Synapse released a few of his films, including Executive Koala, on DVD in the States and in Britain, I learnt of him through Japanorama (2002-7), the BBC Three TV series about Japanese popular culture hosted by talk show host, film critic and noted Japanophile Jonathan Ross, playing at the right time in my adolescence to have a significant effect on my interests. Kawasaki also follows a trajectory found for a lot of Japanese directors of his era, beginning in either V-Cinema or (as in the case of Kawasaki himself) pinku erotic films before moving on to genre films which flirt outside of conventionality. Particularly in the early 2000s, where there was a wave of interest in Japanese films from the cult audience, even someone relatively obscure like Kawasaki (for better or for worse) was intriguing for an English language audience from the "Weird Japan" perspective.

A lot of these films are a potpourri, and some like Executive Koala are exceptionally ridiculous. But for three-thirds of its length Executive Koala, whilst not perfect, is perversely satisfying as a conventional psycho thriller. Played out both in the most mundane of circumstances, in conventional urban Japan, with the central actor playing out the film with a giant koala head on. A costume obviously fake, like a fairground mascot with koala hands and human clothes throughout the length of the narrative, to the point that scenes involving food have the actor just putting it close to the mouth but unable to do little else. The joke is played well, and baring unnecessary winks that puncture the reality, there's delight in how (barring one random woman) no one questions him, nor his boss being a white rabbit, or that the figure who helps characters unravel the mystery is a frog who works in the connivance store. When this joke is played in character it works, such as the first scene of three female employees at the pickle company saying how Tamura is cute despite being a little hairy. That its surrounding a tale of murder with a streak of nastiness to it, with domestic abuse and conspiracy within it, adds something more due to how innocuous the koala costume is. Particularly as there's not actually a lot of adult content - barring some blood and one (frankly unnecessary) scene of sexual dominance using a dog collar, the rest feels like an episode of a weekday crime show in film form, one made stranger especially with cast members wearing animal heads.

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In spite of the exaggeration within these three-quarters of the film, Tamura played by the actor with exaggeration to his manners even with the koala costume on, the very low key tone takes over everything for the better. There has always been a distinction even to the lowest budget of Japanese "cult" films from the 2000s against their Western counterparts. Whilst many digitally shot English language films have been unbearable for me to sit through, the bar of technical quality and mood even the worst pre-digital films had completely lost, the lowest bearing fruit of Japanese genre cinema has still been better for the most part. As much of it is because of even the blandest of white walled public building rooms still having a distinct character, Japan an inherently cinematic place where even their least interesting environments still have personality. Many a genre film like this also benefit from the emphasis many have of a slower pace or at least leaving moments of calm, even if for jokes, to keep things sustained. Because of this you can have Takashi Miike films from this same era, some of his most notorious, which yet leave moments of slow contemplation in-between the perversity for greater effect.

Through this, as much of Executive Koala early on hangs as much on Tamura trying to close in on an important deal with a South Korean company, one which ties in to the main plot as the man he is meeting has a connection to his past, giving the koala further paranoia about his own mind's depth as much as enticing the viewer in whether he's able to secure a lucrative kimchi deal at the same time. When the film ramps up, even if it's cheap "all a dream" shocks or jump scares, they are so ludicrous to the low key tone they become memorable. A red eyed koala in the foreground, whilst a character is oblivious in the background, moving side to side on an unseen camera dolly with a audio sting. A meta scene of "cut!" which is strange but also inspired. The only one I wish Minoru Kawasaki did differently, since it would be acceptable to do so and I've already mentioned Brian De Palma, is an obvious Psycho (1960) reference just to see a koala silhouette against a shower curtain. De Palma, who has baited the audience from the seventies to the current day, played games with these clichés and the structures of thrillers on a high level of budget and technical skill, bringing to them a magic of the unpredictable, even here a little of this spirit in the least expected of circumstances.

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The film does stumble in the final quarter. It is still a memorable film, but it does slip into one of the dangers of these cult Japanese films, that they can try to pile on more plot twists and events to the point they become a mess. This became more problematic for me when you got to the late 2000s and Sushi Typhoon, to my disinterest, became popular in the West with their low budget splatter films. The ending of Executive Koala somewhat squanders to the nice build up of absurdity along its way with hastily put together twists, over-the-top in an unnecessary way by introducing a martial arts style where you can resurrect yourself from the dead and a conspiracy that is abrupt to the more interesting, Raising Cain-like plotting of before. There is a nice moment, that the ending makes a dynamic conflict utterly pointless with only forgiving and forgetting the only way forward, but from the scenes in Alcatraz, the legendary American prison, onwards this film does stumble a little when it could've gone a lot more closer to the first three-quarters of the movie in tone.

Abstract Spectrum: Absurd/Surreal/Wacky

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Personal Opinion:

Though it is with flaws, Executive Koala is fascinating to watch. Pretty funny at times, pretty twisted and dark in plot as much too. It does commit the crime of being too irrelevant and silly especially by the ending, but when it does succeed it brings out of lot of memorable moments that'll stick with you.

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