SpIFF 2015: If it’s Tuesday, this must be Africa

Before we get to Monday night's Spokane International Film Festival feature showing, let's go over what's playing tonight (both screenings are at the Magic Lantern Theater):

"Song From the Forest" (6:30, 100-seat house) — German documentary filmmaker Michael Obert tells the story of American ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno, who spent the better part of three decades in Africa's Congo Basin recording the music of the Central African Republic’s Bayaka pygmies. As a reviewer in Variety wrote, the film is "a curious case of a docu shoot in which a trip to New York feels more exotic than the surrounding rainforest-set footage, which is presented as 'life as usual.' ” Presented with English subtitles.

"Animation Showcase" (6:45, 33-seat house) — Nine short films, including three Oscar-nominated entries, express the range of animation talent around the world. Countries represented include the U.S., Canada, Hungary, the Netherlands and Ireland.

For ticket information, click here.

Regarding Monday's feature film: "Kumiko: The Treasure Hunter" is one of this year's strangest offerings. It's based on an urban legend of a Japanese woman who came to Minnesota and, supposedly, died while searching for the buried loot from the Coen Brothers movie "Fargo" that she thought was real. (In reality, a Japanese woman was found dead in 2001 after having visited Minnesota, but it was determined that she'd actually committed suicide.)

Directed by David Zellner, and starring Rinko Kikuchi, "Kumiko: The Treasure Hunter" follows our protagonist as she finds a mysterious copy of a VHS tape (of "Fargo"), becomes convinced the tape is real, that she is like a "Spanish Conquistador" and, with the help of a stolen credit card, heads for Fargo, N.D. She meets a number of people along the way, including a friendly sheriff's deputy (played by the director), but no one can convince her that she's looking for something that doesn't exist.

Zellner is well familiar with "Fargo," to the point where some of his characters speak like those from the Coens' movie, and some of his scenes feel as if they're taken directly from the film (especially one that has Kumiko running across a snowy field). Kikuchi ("Babel," "Pacific Rim") is good as our lonely, inhibited, sadly doomed protagonist. And the "Kumiko" musical score is, throughout, haunting.

But if there's a message to be found here, other than some people are gullible to the extreme, I really can't say what it is.