Das Mädchen Tamiko

Miyoshi Umeki playing a prostitute? I had to see it to believe it. In A Girl Named Tamiko, she's unfortunately not the title character, but she does indeed play a hooker. Her favorite client is Laurence Harvey, an English photographer who lives in Japan, and she doesn't make him pay for his visits.

Miyoshi is definitely the supporting character, as you might guess from the "and" she received in the opening credits. Although, she may have had that stipulation in her contract, since she played the lead in Flower Drum Song and still was billed with an "and". The bulk of the story focuses on a ridiculous and highly confusing relationship between France Nyugen and Laurence Harvey. In one scene, they don't even like each other and aren't in a good place for a new relationship. In the next, they're in each other's arms claiming they can't bear to be parted. And what about Miyoshi Umeki? How can he be such a cad and break her heart? Maybe because he's Laurence Harvey, and heartbreaking cads are all Hollywood allowed him to play. Still, I felt sorry for her.

You'll also see Michael Wilding, Martha Hyer, Gary Merrill, Ray Teal, and Philip Ahn in the supporting cast if you choose to rent this "romantic" drama. It's not my favorite, since it's one of the pigeon-holed Laurence Harvey flicks that make him out to be a heartless womanizer only out for himself. He's constantly after a traveling Visa so he can leave Japan, but when he starts seducing Martha and France, he's hoping one of them can help him. Not too romantic is it?

I felt this movie did a reasonably good job of dealing with the cross cultural issues of the time and place. That is a significant accomplishment given the complexities of Japan and the lead character's mixed background. This movie can get you thinking if you take the time to watch it closely. Laurence Harvey underplays his role as usual but I think he managed to effectively convey the embittered and driven nature of the character who is also just starting to dare to listen to his feelings. France Nuyen tries but she is manifestly NOT Japanese and cannot come close to fooling anyone. She looks great and is accessible to the Western audiences that the movie was intended for but nonetheless, I was left wondering how the movie would have changed if a Japanese actress had been cast as Tomiko.

The rest of the cast delivers well although one wishes Martha Hyer's character had been given a bit more time to be developed.

Visually very well done.

Laurence Harvey (of "Butterfield Eight" fame) plays a Eurasian (half-Russian/half-Japanese) photographer living in Japan who longs to go to America.

He is torn between his attraction to the blonde American Martha Hyer and the Japanese Tamiko (France Nuyen).

It has its moments and some glimpses of Japanese culture, but is not the greatest film.

Laurence Harvey is a half-Russian, half-Chinese photographer who has been waiting 12 years to immigrate from Japan to the USA. Embittered by the death of his parents during the Japanese invasion of Shanghai, he is now caught between desire for a US Embassy official (Martha Hyer) & growing love for a high-born Japanese girl (France Nuyen). Much more than an escapist romantic melodrama, it explores issues such as the difference in socio-economic classes & its effect on some people, modernity & freedom vs. tradition & culture. Beautifully filmed in Tokyo, Kyoto & the lake region, this movie will have you booking a flight on the next Japan Airlines flight.

Unfortunately, Paramount Studios has NOT released a wide screen DVD of this little seen & underrated film.

This film looks as if it could have come from a more interesting book or play. A Russian photographer is trapped in post-war Tokyo and embittered both by Japan's role in the horrors of the recent war and by its close knit society and the limitations it places on his career. He seeks US citizenship and the professional freedom he perceives that it offers. He becomes torn between an American woman with very idiosyncratic social circumstances but who can offer him transit to the US and a comparatively westernised upper class Japanese girl. The portrayal of the sleazier side of Tokyo life, and especially expatriate life, of the time is interesting and probably representative. For the time it was made this is a particularly "adult" film. Worth a look.