Japanese Story

I think it's one of those memorable movies you'll think about for a long time, but it also seemed to go on for a long time while you're watching it. I think Americans aren't all that comfortable with the very leisurely pace of a lot of foreign films, and that may have been part of the problem -- but there's only so long you can watch someone expressing an emotion before you want to say "I get it, I get it -- can we move on to what happens next?" The plot involves a headstrong young Japanese businessman's visit to the most desolate part of Australia -- a rather tough geologist played by Toni Collette (Muriel's Wedding) is his tour guide. He doesn't quite understand how different Australia is from Japan, and Collette has her hands full trying to chauffeur him around. The movie centers around the relationship that develops between these two very different people, set in the mind-bogglingly desolate Australian outback.

If your idea of a great movie involves car chases, this is definitely not the movie for you. If you like slower and more nuanced movies, then this one is definitely worth seeing.

This is as much an Australian story as a Japanese one. We are not about to turn Japanese, but our close economic relationship over the last 50 years has to some extent transcended the cultural gap that divides us, and the bitterness of World War 2. On one level, this is a very personal story of two people from different cultures who become closer than they might have imagined. On another level it examines two very different cultures tied together by economic necessity. These themes are played out in a truly awe- inspiring ancient landscape, which, as others have remarked, is a character on its own.

I've not been to the Pilbara, but I've been to places like it elsewhere in Australia, and they tend to have the effect of reminding you of the fragility of your existence. The Aborigines (represented here by only a gas station attendant) regarded themselves as belonging to the land and here you can see why. It's not clear what Tachibana Hiromitsu, the rich businessman's son, is looking for in the desert, but he certainly feels its power. Just why Sandy the tough female geologist comes to harbour tender feelings towards him is not evident either; perhaps it's the mothering instinct at work- he's not an adaptable kind of guy and perhaps she senses his vulnerability.

Apart from the firm refusal to turn this film into a romantic comedy, despite some `When Harry Met Sally' moments, there are several other things going for it. First there is Toni Collette's entirely convincing performance which overcomes some weaknesses in the storyline (and improbabilities in her character). She has a lot of ground to cover, from boredom to hilarity, from dislike to intimacy, and from terror to melancholy.

Second, the cinematography fully exploits the scenery without detracting from the story. Much of `Japanese Story' was filmed around Port Headland in the Pilbara, but it's not a tourist brochure. Third, even the minor parts are played with precision (eg John Howard as the BHP man and Yukimo Tanaka as Tachibana's wife). It's difficult to judge just how effective Gotaro Tsunashima is – you'd need to be Japanese, I guess, and anyway the script is from an Australian, Alison Tilson. To my eyes he seems real enough, if we accept he's from a very privileged and sheltered background. It's interesting that Sandy seems to be the initiator of their intimacy (he doesn't resist!).

I think this film would hold up well anywhere. It has more than the usual emotional content for an Australian film, an intriguing and poignant story, good acting, and it's not too long. The admission price is also considerably cheaper than an air ticket to Port Headland.

In an age when criticism has become debased and few people are really certain about what constitutes true worth in art, it is difficult to use the word "masterpiece" about any film. And yet that word is applicable here. At first this film appears to be just a bog-standard romantic love story, in the Hollywood mould, about two very different characters who meet and fall in love in unusual circumstances. Opposites attract, and so on.

However, as the story unfolds one becomes aware that there are many more levels to it than one would normally expect. Everything, from the title to incidental characters and the spectacular images of the desert, has been carefully thought out. It raises profound questions about a fashionable subject: identity, but also about love itself. Are these characters in love, or is it merely the terrifying starkness of the Australian outback that has thrown them together? Finally a third person enters the relationship, who complicates matters even further. Despite the romantic overtones of this film it is lifted, ultimately, by its absolute realism. Small gestures betoken whole story lines and glimpses of other characters throw the protagonists into sharp relief. Other influences begin to trickle through: Yasujiro Ozu, Peter Weir (in his early days), Japanese Haiku. And yet this is an entirely original work.

This film had a huge emotional impact on me, but it also made me think, about my own life and about the choices I've made. It did everything that a genuine work of art should do, and without any of the fanfare that we, in the West, have come to associate with art. Small wonder that it got little of the attention that in previous eras it would have attracted. Watch it, and discover that it is still possible to make a classic.

"Japanese Story" is a fascinating exploration of gender and cultural roles, with a more incisive take on the contrasts than "Lost in Translation," let alone than in the simplicity of "The Last Samurai."

The Australian outback is a harsher but beautiful landscape of blokes and sheilas than the Manhattan of "Sex and the City" but it brings into relief similar questions of expectations of guys and gals in life and sex.

Toni Colette's "Sandy" is one tough geologist required to guide Gotaro Tsunashima to his father's company's environment-destroying mining businesses. Each suspiciously views the other through narrow stereotypical lenses that block out the complexities of their real lives and potential.

They very gradually adapt to each other, opening each other up to new experiences in quite unexpected ways, even though their language and life communication is still limited. She is the shaggy, physical, confident one; he is the smooth, intellectual, diffident one. "Sandy" is aggressive in a way much more typical of males in U.S. movies, while "Tachibana" is redolent of the farm wife in "The Bridges of Madison County."

The third act is even more startling in its catharsis for "Sandy" as she finds inner strengths and vulnerabilities to deal with her responsibilities across the cultural chasm.

Australia has given the cinema some wonderfully adept and strikingly effective female actors in the past twenty years or so, Judy Davis starting a parade that includes Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett and Toni Collett among others. Collett has the ability to convincingly inhabit many different roles, her part as the depressed, suicidal mom in "About a Boy" being one of her most memorable.

"Japanese Story" is a quirky tale about Sandy Edwards, Collette, an Australian geologist in her, I would guess, mid-thirties. She's ordered to squire about the son of a Japanese industrialist whose investment in a major project is dearly desired by her bosses. The young man, handicapped by a very poor grasp of English and virtually none of Australian, is played by Gotaro Tsunashima. He might be well known in his native country but he was a new screen presence for me.

Sandy takes him on a tour of an achingly eerie, desolate, windswept part of Western Australia. Must of the movie was filmed in the Pilbara Desert, still aborigine country.

Sandy and her charge encounter adventurous situations while, no surprise, a romance springs up. Why Sandy would be attracted to the younger gentleman is never explained and it really shouldn't have been. "Japanese Story" asks the viewer to simply accept that liaisons arise without any deep preliminary exposition of character.

I won't reveal the plot, somewhat unexpected, but fate insures that this affair doesn't proceed swimmingly. What makes the movie is Collette's superb and affecting acting. I cared about her while knowing relatively little about her character's past life other than she hasn't completely resolved mom-daughter issues.

Nothing in this film could impel me to ever wish to go to the Pilbara Desert but it does excite my desire to see Collette take on many more challenging roles. She has a strong future-I hope.

8/10. See it if it plays near you, rent it later if not. You won't be sorry.