Foreign trailer for Toad's Oil, which screened at the 2009 Vancouver International Film Festival.
Toad’s Oil is the Japanese equivalent of snake oil, the kind of patent cure-all remedy hawked by quack doctors in traveling shows in days gone by. It survives as a childhood memory in the mind of stock market day-trader Yazawa Takuro, whose already chaotic life is turned upside-down when his beloved son Takuya is knocked down in a traffic accident. As Takuya lies in a coma, his hopelessly immature father finds himself cast as a surrogate dad to Takuya’s hulking buddy Saburo, fresh out of borstal--and as surrogate lover to Takuya’s girlfriend Hikari, who takes his telephone voice for Takuya’s. Subsequent complications include a roadtrip to Osore-zan (“Mount Fear”) in Aomori, home of spirits, demons and four-leaf clovers, and several imaginary encounters with an old-time travelling medicine show. There’s a lot of emotional hurt for this Toad’s Oil to cure...