Rinko Kikuchi

In Babel (2006), Rinko Kikuchi makes Chieko’s distress clear without spoken dialogue. Playing a deaf teenager, she conveys complicated feelings without making them easy to resolve. We were moved by the way she communicates Chieko’s isolation, then frustrated by how little the writing lets her be besides troubled. We rate Kikuchi’s performance more highly than we rate the film. Her individual scenes remain convincing when the effort to connect everyone’s suffering starts to feel needlessly managed.

Alejandro G. Iñárritu draws committed work from his ensemble, with Cate Blanchett’s Susan Jones and Adriana Barraza’s Amelia providing much of its emotional weight. Kikuchi helps make the same case for staying close to these people rather than piling up misfortune around them. She can make pain credible, but she cannot make every contrivance that produces it credible too. Chieko needs more to do than demonstrate how much she hurts.

Her international breakthrough came after Japanese independent films including The Taste of Tea (2004), and the later work has moved between intimate drama and larger productions. Bang Bang in The Brothers Bloom (2008) continued the use of limited dialogue; Naoko in Norwegian Wood (2010) placed her in a literary adaptation. As Mako Mori in Pacific Rim (2013), she moved into a major Hollywood action role. Her physical commitment, supported by training that includes sword-fighting, makes that turn less surprising than it might sound.

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (2014), with Kikuchi in the lead, is a natural next stop for anyone interested in her dramatic work. The appeal is a lead performance built on the intensity she can bring to a part. The caution is about casting: she is often asked to play isolated or rebellious young women dealing with trauma, and we would welcome more opportunities beyond those parts. Watch Babel for her, provided a drama that keeps insisting on its own seriousness does not put you off.