Rinko Kikuchi in Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (Amplify)

A young Japanese woman becomes obsessed by the scene in Fargo where actor Steve Buscemi buries a suitcase full of cash by a fence post, and she makes the trek from Tokyo to Fargo to find said suitcase. It’s an absurd idea for a movie. It involves leaps of logic that are mind-boggling. How could she possibly believe that a fictional movie could yield buried treasure? Seriously. How? And what would happen if she ever saw The Exorcist? And yet….

With Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, the filmmakers take an Internet urban legend from the early aughts and expand and deepen it into a gorgeous, funny, touching, and ultimately heartbreaking meditation on loneliness, obsession, and connection.

Kumiko is a 29-year-old office worker, one of many in Tokyo, and she’s painfully shy, unable to look people in the eye. Her shoulders are hunched over as if anticipating the next body blow that life will deal her, and she walks in an awkward, splayed shuffle step, giving the impression of a lame duck. When a long forgotten friend engages her in conversation, Kumiko can hardly get two words out of her mouth. Even then, she barely speaks above a whisper. She meets this friend for lunch, and when she is asked to watch her friend’s five-year-old while the mother heads to the restroom, Kumiko withstands the child’s stare for perhaps 30 seconds before bolting out of the restaurant.

The one person she seems to have any connection to is her mother, whom she calls occasionally and receives a barrage of questions and criticism. Are you dating? Have you gotten a promotion? She also has a bunny, which she feeds by desultorily pouring a full bag of pellets over the top of the cage. Only the aforementioned scene in Fargo engages her. She has a notebook full of notes and drawings devoted to it, and has crocheted a treasure map with a red X where Buscemi has buried the stash. She rewinds and reviews the film over and over again. Every night it seems. This is our heroine. Our sad, self-involved, deluded, beautiful heroine.

The obsession grows until she heads off to the good old U.S.A. to find Buscemi’s gold. Arriving knowing very little English, besides the words “I want to go Fargo,” she makes a concerted, obsessive effort to get to her storied treasure. The culture shock affects viewers more than it does Kumiko, who brushes off all distraction.

The Zellner brothers (Matt and Nathan) do a superb job of keeping us on our toes. They will circle around an obvious plot point or potential cliché and just before landing will take off in a surprising but completely logical and satisfying direction. Don’t try to outguess them. It won’t work. Even the inevitable ending takes on a note of tragedy, grace, and hope that is so complete yet so unexpected that it fits regardless. It’s like hearing an orchestra play the final chord that resolves so satisfyingly and encapsulates everything before it.

Not enough can be said about Rinko Kikuchi’s lead performance. She’s in practically every scene. To see her strive, her need for this one thing to exist when all else around her has failed is just heartbreaking. Her absurd obsession somehow takes on all of our odd quests and ludicrous desires. No wonder her shoulders are so hunched. She carries our hope and failures on her back. There are many good and very good actors, but very few have the ability to be so effortlessly open and emotionally naked, especially in the moment when Kumiko calls her mother when she’s lost and desperate as her mother, completely unsympathetic, reprimands hers.

Lest you think this is a downer of a flick, it should be noted that there is humor here. At times, it takes the deadpan tone of a solid Jim Jarmusch project, if that film had a lead with the single-mindedness of a character out of a Werner Herzog film. At other times, the absurdity of the situation lends itself to laughter. But, on most counts, it’s just the observational humor of a human being living her life.

I urge you to see this gem of a film.