First off let me deal with the question that will be on both of your lips. No. This film does not actually contain any ducks. Believe me I’m crushed too. From the title alone I was expecting some sort of cutsey manga involving bigoted mallards who overcome their differences in order to defeat a wicked Swan who has somehow trapped a God in slot machine. No such luck here.

Instead The Foreign Duck, the Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker (from here-on-out referred to as Ducks) is a off-beat drama with real folk in it.  A freshman named Shiina (Gaku Hamada) moves into a new apartment. Small, quiet and nervous Shiina is alarmed and awed when he meets neighbour Kawasaki (Eita). Handsome and confident Kawasaki is everything Shiina isn’t . They bond over Shiina’s love of Bob Dylan, particularly the song ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ (which is sung a LOT throughout the film). As the two quickly become close the film spirals into a strange plot that involves stealing a Kojien dictionary for another nieghbour who turns out to be an old love rival of Kawasaki. The object of his affections having worked at a pet shop which in turn draws Shiina to visit and strike up his own relationship. Told through a bevy of increasingly dark flashbacks the film climaxes with a suitably odd situation.

Joking aside about lack of ducks aside (although one would have been nice), Ducks is an odd film to pin-point. It would fit quite comfortable in the raft of American independent films that came out mid-2000’s like Thumbsucker and Running With Scissors. The film is given to a few moments of “odd for odd’s sake”, Shiina almost constant singing of Bob Dylan seems less a character trait than an irritating quirk. The film’s main plot point – maybe macguffin? – is the robbery of a dictionary. An idea in itself which seems forced, as if the writer thought “how odd would that be?”. The whole film is filled with a knowingly off balanced humour which betrays a compelling story of anger and regret.

Kawasaki explains the reasons for all his decisions to us through flashbacks of a simpler time. Showing the story of his love triangle, it’s not a hugely original story but I found these sequences more dramatically satisfying. Perhaps the present day portions are intentionally off kilter to match Kawasaki’s own psyche or maybe that’s over analysis. Director Yoshihiro Nakamura has clearly enjoyed the cinema of Jim Jarmusch. The entire film has a distance and coldness to it. Accused too of odd for odd’s sake Jarmusch tends to favour atmosphere and characters over plot,  five minutes scenes can play out in silence but within that silence some sort of character change has become apparent. Ducks though makes the mistake of focusing on it’s crack-pot plot rather than characters. People flutter in and out of flashbacks and present day sequences to the point of not caring. Shiina should make a charming protagonist to follow but he’s really quite dull, as the film picks up speed toward the end revelations abound but none of them seem surprising or particularly interesting. In fact a reveal that the mystery neighbour lives in Room 101 led me to groan as opposed to a “oh, very good”.

If this review has seemed a little scatter shot I would like to apologies but the truth is I found it quite a hard film to dissect. Not through any indecipherable 2001: A Space Odyssey style story but on the grounds that I was so unaffected by it that it was just a dull watch. Not bad enough to get angry at and not good enough to gush over.
is the true essence of instantly forgettable.

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