‘Tocka’: An existential end-of-the-road trip

A bedraggled middle-aged man with a conspicuous bandage on his forehead accosts strangers outside a station, offering them paid work. Nobody stops to ask for details, but if they did, they would learn that this is no ordinary get-rich-quick scam. Shoji Tanigawa (Kiyobumi Kaneko) is looking to end his life — and he needs some assistance.

Wherever rock bottom is, Shoji has long since passed it. His wife and son are both dead, his appliance store has gone belly-up and he’s mired in alcoholism and debt. Now he wants to end it all, so his teenage daughter can claim a ¥50 million life insurance payout. However, that rules out suicide, so he goes in search of someone who can help him engineer an “accidental” demise.

When his first attempt doesn’t go to plan, he heads to an online suicide forum, which is how he meets Saki (the single-named Nahana). She’s returned to her hometown after a failed singing career in Tokyo and is struggling financially, making Shoji’s proposed ¥5 million fee attractive. He quickly recognizes her as a kindred spirit, albeit one who isn’t so far along the downward spiral; when he declares that “choosing how to die is the last freedom a man has,” she doesn’t roll her eyes, though some viewers may not be so forgiving.

The third player in this sorry tale is Yukito (Hiroki Sano), who’s younger but just as hopeless. His mother is dying, his sister is about to become a single parent, and he has a dead-end job working for a junk disposal company while selling stolen kerosene on the side. After fleeting encounters with both Shoji and Saki, he gets embroiled in their scheme via a meet-cute worthy of the Coen Brothers at their most morbid, sending them off on an unlikely road trip together.

“Tocka” is the first movie in 18 years from Yoshitaka Kamada, a former pinku eiga (erotic film) director who transitioned to straight indie features with 2005’s well-received “Yumeno,” only to drop off the radar. Like his previous feature, the film was shot on the director’s home turf on the northeast coast of Hokkaido. It’s an area with the interstitial quality typical of border regions: Shoji can pick up Russian-language radio from the nearby Kuril Islands on his car stereo, while his shuttered store is adorned with posters in Cyrillic. Hiromitsu Nishimura’s unvarnished cinematography, shot on 16mm film, captures the stark beauty of the winter landscapes, though it also brings out the grime.

While “Yumeno” drew comparisons to the work of 1990s wunderkind Shinji Aoyama, the astringency of “Tocka” brings to mind an earlier era of Japanese cinema — represented in a cameo by 83-year-old firebrand Masao Adachi. That’s not to say it’s totally dour: Kamada injects some mordant humor into his story, even if the most implausible moments are played straight.

The film takes its name from a Russian term, frequently romanized as “toska,” for which there’s no direct English equivalent. In the words of Vladimir Nabokov: “At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without specific cause. ... At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.” There’s little risk of the latter while watching “Tocka.” Kamada’s ragged, raging film brings the absurdity of life — and death — bracingly close to home.