One of the weirdest films shown as part of the cult strand at this year's London Film Festival, Johannes Nyholm's Koko-Di Koko-Da sees married couple Elin & Tobias (Ylva Gallon & Leif Edlund Johannson) embark on a camping holiday in order to salvage their relationship after a tragic loss that has affected them both deeply. But when a trio of murderous oddballs appear from the woods, Elin & Tobias find themselves trapped in a bizarre recurring nightmare from which there appears to be no escape.
During one night of camping in a wooded area just off the main road, Elif wakes in the night in desperate need of a pee. When her husband Tobias rejects her idea of peeing under the tent flooring, she ventures into the trees and encounters a trio of psychopaths merrily sauntering by, singing "Koko-Di, Koko-Da" over and over again. Elif and her husband are both attacked and killed, but the film then returns Groundhog Day style to the moment Elif wakes Tobias needing a pee, with Tobias assuming what he's just experienced to be a dream.
It may share a basic plot function with Groundhog Day, but this is a very different animal, offering a very real and poignant study of grief and marital breakdown and very little in the way of joy. There's plenty to dissect about what it all means and what the three characters represent (a large mute man dressed like a lumberjack and carrying a dead dog, a lank haired woman with pigtails and lead by Peter Belli's jolly little man who resembles Lyle Lanley from The Simpsons), but at times there's an overwhelming feeling that Koko-Di Koko-Da is being weird for weird's sake.
I couldn't tell you how many times the film cycles through the same scenario with very little learned from the previous go around, which does test your resolve to see the film reach something akin to a logical climax. To be fair, there are occasional breaks away from the repetitive nature of the story with some kabuki theatre segments that are undeniably gorgeous to look at, and the final act does offers a jarring conclusion that will make you think back over everything you've just seen. There is an issue with the focus of the film which, although the story is spurred on by the shared trauma this couple has and always returns to the same jumping off point of the wife needing to take a leak, the film is solely told from the point of view of the husband. It's a cyclical film so it's more of a case of a minor grievance being amplified due to repetition, but on one of the goes around could they have not given the wife a bit more agency on what is going on?
At times a frustrating watch due to being SO F**KING WEIRD that may make you wonder if the experience is worthwhile, but like the infectious little nursery rhyme ear worm the characters sing as they appear out of the woods, the surreal scenario of Koko-Di Koko-Da will by cycling through your brain for a long while after the film ends.
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