Customer Reviews

Japanese Story [VHS]

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

JAPANESE STORY is simply one of the finest films to be released in 2003. Why this extraordinary work didn't garner more publicity and attention in this country is unexplainable, but perhaps now that this rather unique and intimate story can be viewed on DVD it may hopefully gain the access into the hearts and minds of the general populace it so very much deserves.

Australia. Geologists. Contemporary political and economic push pulls between overpopulated and commerced Japan and the vast emptiness and opportunity of the Australian outback. These topics do not seem to contain a fragile story, but that is exactly what these ingredients serve us. Sandy (Toni Collette in yet another superlative performance, this one clearly her breakthrough role that establishes her as one of today's most important actors) is a bored, frank, coarse geologist who is asked by her boss Baird (Matthew Dyktynski) to serve as 'tour guide' for a visiting Japanese businessman whose company's interest in Baird's abilities could be the important step in his future. Sandy balks but submits and meets the very rigid Tachibana Hiromitsu (Gotaro Tsunashima) and off they go to visit not just the lands represented by the company for whom Sandy works, but also the Pilbara Desert at the insistence of Hiro. There is a complex and entertaining struggle of wills which culminates in an impossibly awful 'bogging down' of their vehicle in the sands of the desert. In the middle of nowhere the essentials of surviving - and relating - create a chemistry that beautifully and subtlety bonds the two. Each gives the other the gift of an Open Heart. The remainder of the journey includes a pitch perfect climax and it is the management of this change that reveals the strength of that formed relationship. What has been a delicately humorous movie becomes a moving story about need, trust, and coping. Director Sue Brooks brings out the very best in all her actors and has elected a cinematographer to survey Australia as beautifully as any movie in memory. A fine story with many layers of meaning and an absolutely brilliant performance by Toni Collette make this a must see for everyone, no matter your taste in movies.

Japanese Story is a good film, let me be clear about that.
It might not be the masterpiece that the Australian Film Board Awards (the equivalent of the Oscars and Baftas) thought it is, winning a lot of nominations, but it is nevertheless a well acted and directed film.
A love story with a twist between an Australian geologist played to perfection by Toni Collette (and a well deserved award for her role) and a Japanese business man, played by Gotaro Tsunashima in his first feature role, the film does offer a fresh treatment of the cross cultural romantic encounters that I thought very few films approached.
Without spoiling the twist in the film, I very much believe that Japanese Story has been misunderstood and its points missed on many,and hence my desire to write this review.
A business road trip with two very unlikely characters from two different worlds, leads rather maybe predictably to a connection that is strengthened after a night lost and spent in the vastness of the Australian desert.
Many reviewers have thought that this romance was rather very quick and not quite believable, but I think differently..In real life, there are countless examples of instant infatuations' or 'love at first sight' and while this is not the case with our two leads, it somehow makes sense that the sharing of hardships between them , the subdued humor of Gotaro, the loneliness and increased interest of Colette might very well have led to love.
(A rather distant example can be made with the romance of Dr Zhivago and Lara, when they were thrown by circumstances together, irrespective of the established lives they had outside their relationship)
The sad and unexpected ending where Colette shows her finest acting to date, is touching, because she realized how much she cared for him after the incident..as if he has revived feelings she tried to hide or did not take seriously, until too late.
So in that respect the film works beautifully..
Although some of the conversations between the two were rather weak, it is the whole atmosphere of the film, the beauty of the vast and empty spaces,and the bonding of two people in unconventional and potentially dangerous situation, that I found was well done in the film..
There are some love scenes as well, one of which I found surprisingly very erotic and tastefully done.
Japanese Story is a quite, sweet and sad little film that soothes the eyes,and moves with its fine acting and competent direction. Compared to many similar films of late, it is far from bad, and definitely worth a look.. or two..

(...). Director Sue Brooks gives us a rare gem of a film about intercultural love against the backdrop of an alternately desolate and lush Australian desert. Sandy (Toni Colette) is a gritty Aussie geologist, attractive and hard, it seems, with little patience to chaperone fresh-off-the plane Tachibana (Gotaro Tsunashima). The young man has arrived from Kyoto to look after his father's mining project. Sandy sulks at the traditionally Japanese Tachibana's commands. She's a cog in his eyes and he clearly is the boss in these parts. Brooks' straightforward direction develops the relationship between these opposites at a realistically uneven pace.

Sandy takes Tachibana deeper into the interior. At one point he marvels from a mountaintop overlooking the vast desert colors and up at the arching silver blue sky. Clearly, cramped Japan offers nothing like this to him. He has met his match in Sandy and the rugged land, and new feelings stir within him. Tachibana revels in meeting obstacles head-on as they plow forward, with his virtual `bushido' determination. The jeep falls into a quagmire, Sandy wants out, but Tachibana will move heaven, but mostly earth, to get going again, and so they do. Exhausted, they collapse into sleep in the cold night desert air. Sandy gently nudges close to him. Later they make love in a motel, curiously, deeply. We are left anticipating what direction the story will take. The next day, everything changes, the silent intimacy is replaced by sheer joy in their love and life - these are two `kids' in love, tender in expression, sitting beside a lush oasis, the river rippling, seeming to call to them. Tachibana ambiguously says of his wife back in Japan, "I will make it right".

The rest of the film contains some shocking events which, well, impact all that has gone before. Late in the film, we see the wistful, knowing eyes of Tachibana's beautiful wife (a memorable cameo by Yumiko Tanaka). And through her, we understand everything at once, it seems -- about Sandy, Tachibana, and the gut-wrenching depths of cross-cultural love. This is both a deeply touching and shocking film brought to vivid life by superb character acting and Brooks' restrained direction.

I bought this DVD in April 2004 and did not have the time to write a review.

Contrary to others, I do not see a Love story here but a metaphor on how twisted Life can be, with great or tiny tragedies and how people deal with them.

I have read some reviews and I agree that this is a kind of a movie that you either grasp it or miss it altogether. The slow pace is painstakingly slow indeed, but that is another facet of the movie that ads to the kind of impact it causes: you don't feel it, you just want to know how the story ends, you just want to see how the movie wraps up. And when it ends, you feel your heart all taken by the story: "Hiromitsu loves Sandy"

I have seen this movie over and over - even bought the CD with its soundtrack, for I loved it - and every time I marvel with Toni Collette's and Yumiko Tanaka's performance in the scene at the airport, when they come to terms with dignity.

One must understand the Japanese mentality to truly grasp the meaning of what Sandy did and why, for she was able to figure out the Japanese way and how important it was to Hiromitsu's wife, who would have to deal with a lot of unanswered questions in her heart for the rest of her life. And likewise, then, one will understand Yumiko's "thank you"

This appears to be the cut version, with the deleted scenes included as extras, which loses it at least one star. Which is a great shame, because while Japanese Story may fall into the love it or hate it category, for my money it's one of the best films of the century and marks director Sue Brooks out as a real talent to watch.

The less said about the plot the better to get the most out of the film, which makes it a bit of a hard sell and may account for its low international takings. Suffice it to say, a less than happy Toni Collette draws the short straw and has to drive arrogant young Japanese businessman Gotaro Tsunashima around the Australian Pilbara desert while trying to sell a computer software program, only to find herself on an emotional journey that takes a genuinely unexpected turn (and not the unexpected turn you're expecting). It's ultimately powerful and affecting stuff, driven by a remarkable career-best performance by Collette and filmed with an emotional and visual assurance that is quite remarkable. Ian Baker's Scope photography is superb, giving a sense of the vastness of the unforgiving landscape that drives the two together, and neither director nor editor is afraid to use long takes when they're needed. Pretty damn amazing.

"The Japanese Story" should really be called the Australian Story in that Australia's gorgeous Pilbara desert plays such a big part in the success of this alternative, out-of-the-box love story between a Perth based Geologist (a stunning Toni Collette) and a Japanese businessman (Gotaro Tsunashima).
Initially both of these people dislike each other: both finding the other obnoxious and strong-willed. But Love soon blooms and all is sublimely idyllic, with lovemaking and skinny-dipping in the red-sanded desert. Then tragedy strikes and it is really at this point that director Sue Brooks and Collette's movie begins in earnest.
Toni Collette gives the performance of her life as a woman who has fought for everything she has: respect and a place in a field that is usually reserved for men. But she has never made a place for Love in her busy life and yet, despite this she finds it on this excursion through the desert with a man she initially hates...and then it is gone.
The 360-degree turn of this film from a love story to a tragedy is unexpected and the film becomes richer and deeper for it. And Toni Colette, in an emotionally available performance that packs a genuine wallop, reminds us once again what a versatile and provocative actress she really is.

This film either hits you emotionally or it completely misses. Maybe it's that the film is, essentially, two films that divide at the second act midpoint. In the first part, the film is about a rather typical Australian woman, self-possessed, macho, brusque and unabashed. She is a geologist who wants to sell her software to a Japanese businessman who is there to see an iron ore operation that his family partly owns. The woman, played by the changeling genius Toni Collette, drives the Japanese businessman (Gotaro Tsunashima) into the outback to survey the mines. They get stuck out in a very bad spot in the desert and ultimately, by working together, manage to get themselves free. It has been a life and death situation, and the exhilaration of the success makes them both giddy.

Collette, a rough-handed Aussie gal, is quite curious and even intoxicated by this very handsome and exquisitely delicate man, so foreign to her. They begin an affair. Then midway through, there is a drastic event that changes everything. The rest of the film is devoted to the aftermath of this event.

This movie moves slowly, too slowly for some. And there seem to be some rather wild swings in Collette's character and some huge lapses (a real Australian would never go into the outback without a second car in the group, satellite phone, etc). But I bought into Collette's character's strange arc. Maybe it's her extraordinary talent that worked for me, I don't know, but the film packed a strong emotional wallop for me. I had my doubts when the car got stuck because it's just so absurd that any experienced Aussie would ever get into that situation, but I let it go. Ultimately, I was rewarded for that suspension of disbelief.

Disturbing, spacey, good double-feature with Icelandic film "The Sea". I love Collette too, from "Cosi", "Muriel's Wedding"...
Real-life issues are forcefully grounded in Shockingly beautiful nature photography. You are forced, through use of Shock, to confront the gritty essences of life in the "real world" involving the elementals of earth, sand, sky, and water. The movie's car is the "Car-ride of Life", a vessel that both transports us through life, distances us from experiencing the world, and speeds us tooo fast towards our fate. Quite often we are so removed from the realities of our life by our obsessions, worries, cultural hangups, earning money---even our buildings and societies keep us from experiencing life. Even death is not experienced, as the sick, dying and dead are isolated from the us.

In this car-ride, you have the reconnections with the real experiences of life: in-the-moment experiences of living, emotional connections, sometimes inexplicable love/sex connections, and end-of-life realities.

"Country-girl" and "City-boy" meet, hate each other, they both view each other as rude & vulgar, are forced into days of intense one-on-one...eventually the curiousity & internal lonliness heats up.. They've picked the most extreme "city-boy" you can find, a "Japanese Salaryman".

(NOTE: My own significant-other, foreign-raised, would rather risk an accident than "go" in the woods, seeing this in the film was funny. Also familiar, the fears of looking foolish, trying new things, and tripping on intense internal pressures & absentee workaholic fathers. Also, dangerous lack of skills/commonsense outside the study/work realm.)

Anyway, these two are examples of being too isolated in their own little worlds, they lack "street-smarts" for the whole of human existence. His lack of practical knowlege gets them in trouble with terrible consequences, and her lack of social skills hurts her, especially Japanese business manners. He is very isolated/isolating from everything, prissy, using his camera to shield himself, immature, using Daddy's name to jerk people around instead of learning to use his own power. Her negativity, anger & bitterness are her isolation tools.

The sandbog scene shows his fear of imperfection & embarrassment, him secretely disabling his cellphone preventing her from calling for help. He got them into the mess, too embarrassed to let anybody find out, he's desperate to fix it himself---so he read the BOOK. I think she could've got them out, but would rather have called to make absolutely sure they got out. He had no real concept of how deadly a situation they were in, being far out in the middle of a desert & not prepared.

I'm not sure about the chemistry between these two, there wasn't any warm leadup to the initial hookup, except the stealth-eyeballing each other. But then, are only logical hookups allowed in life? The camera-work treats him more as a woman, he's hairless, no muscles, and very pretty. He's really prissy, distastful of manual labor, dirt--you can see it with his body language.

The actual initial hookup was kinda icky/creepy, he laid there like a plastic doll, or rather like two plastic dolls investigating each other. (And trust me, you cannot do it with pants on, the zipper will slice-&-dice. Also, certain folks are soo prissy, they'd never let you do that to their biz-clothes unless they could run it through the cleaners TWICE. Worse than Seinfeld! Unless he asked her to do it..)

As they spend more time together, they become more honest, better communicators, more trusting, less defensive. He starts to look less like a plastic prissy-doll, more relaxed, happy, more willing to throw away the road maps. The hookups more human, he's taking more active roles. She is gentler, more open to enjoyment, but kinda ignoring how she'll feel when he'll go back to wifey. Both are kinda naive that it's not going to hurt when he goes back. This trip is probably the most unusual thing either has ever done, they've never looked more alive.

Then poof, the car-ride is over way too soon, as it usually does, and she has to deal with something she's never had any experience dealing with. Neither have her coworkers, they can't relate. The loss is 100-times worse than she obviously expected. Her guilt keeps her from making any final goodbyes--if she hadn't boinked, she would've felt fine about making the final goodbye or dealings with the wife.

But then, if you could read the future, what would you have done on the trip? I think they did perfect. It's devastating, and Collette does a fabulous job. In the end, you see that Sandy has come to understand the scrapbook and it's standing testiment for others that have gone away.

NOTE: Of course, the "Bang-it because life is short" idea should be weighed against losing 50% of marital assets & child support.
NOTE: Japanese Muzak: what is with the same horribly bad muzak song playing at "important" moments? Jeez, there's 100-times better Japanese material around, mix it up a bit.

Though this film purports to portray the relationship between an uptight Japanese business man and his brash geologist tour guide, the brutal, gorgeous Australian outback steals the scene after scene. Even with the sound off, the delectable crimsons, ebonies and golds of the desert make viewing the movie worthwhile.

Geologist Sandy Edwards somehow draws the job of showing Tachibana Hiromitsu, son of a Japanese mining magnate, around Australia. Sandy is as loudmouthed and assertive as Hiromitsu is guarded and proper. Some of the film's visual humor involves the comparison of Sandy in midriff-revealing tops, and desert-rat boots exploring the desert with Hiro in black dress pants and button-down shirts. The pair get into assorted scrapes and arguments as they travel the desert -- in search of what, we are never sure. But while this looks like the classic cliché movie showing the pairing (and inevitable attraction) of extreme opposites, the film has a few surprises up its sleeves. The first half of the film is rather predictable, but after a crisis point, the characters find themselves on unfamiliar terrain, attempting to find their way on the shifting sands of cultural differences and decisions on how much truth is safe and proper to express. Hiro has attachments back home, and by the movie's end, we are confronted with the feelings of guilt, remorse and fidelity. We come to understand what Hiro was looking for (and found) in Australia in the first place.

Special mention goes to actress Yukiko Kamaka who expresses an enormous amount of intelligence, dignity and emotional pain with about two lines of scripted dialog.

Please do not misconstrue my first statement. This is not a movie which begs for your sympathy rather it commands your attention for the whole length of the movie. After a long long time you see great (I really mean it) photography only expected from very few directors. I can watch this movie couple of times just of the cinematography and frame composition. Every frame can be in our drawing room as a piece of art.
The movie has a very abnormal story line - first an affair between a Japanese businessman (Gotaro Tsunashima), and his Australian guide (Toni Collette) then a bizarre twist. I will not mention the twist so that you do not loose interest in the movie. The travels through the Australian Pilbara desert is breathe taking and blow your socks off. This is like a massive clash if culture which turns in a melting spot of two completely diverse characters completely in their own terms without any compromise. While watching the movie sometimes you feel like reading Kawabata again you get back to the Aussie world and immediately you are transferred to the world of Mishima's romance and melodrama. I was little disappointed with the dialogue and expected little better. The background music can win an academy (please remember all movie do not need a Stravinsky with Karajan as the conductor). To summarize rarely you come across such a good movie so watch it if you can. This is not a Hollywood movie so it will not be nominated for 12 academy awards neither it is about some historical religious hysteria. This is just about 2 people in love.