Map of the Sounds of Tokyo

A dramatic thriller that centers on a fish-market employee (Rinko Kikuchi) who doubles as a contract killer . She is a tough murderer who's hired by a powerful businessman as an assassin to kill a Spaniard (Sergi Lopez) owner of a winery in Tokyo whom he blames for the suicide of his daughter. Concerning the problematic existences of two particular roles played by Rinko Kikuchi and Sergi López , as their lives are intersected and both of them will change in unexpected consequences and unpredictable ways.

Isabel Coixet is in love with contemporary Japanese culture as evidenced by this outlandish film in which she reflects a lot on Japanese customs. The film gives a wide vision of today's Tokyo, the bustling streets, the peculiar hotels , the noisy markets , the popular karaokes and at the same time reflecting the solitude of the big metropolis. Isabel Coixet's infatuation with Japanese culture is well attested to the fact that she called her film production ¨Miss Wasabi Films¨. On a visit to a fish market while promoting "The Secret Life of Words" in the Land of the Rising Sun, the Barcelona filmmaker was inspired and decided to pay off her outstanding debt to Japan by shooting this sui generis film , which, although it is shot in Tokyo, maintains her intimate and special trademarks . In addition , she had two great actors : Rinko Kikuchi (nominated an Academy Award for Babel) as an assassin who's is hired by an avenger old man to kill and Sergi López as an unfortunate entrepreneur in Tokyo , both of whom monopolize practically all the footage of the film. As the picture relies heavily on the outlandish relationship between the two awesome protagonists : Rinko Kikuchi and Sergi López giving nice acting , including some strong erotic scenes among them . Despite being nominated for the Goya for best sound and Golden Palm at Cannes , and taking the technical prize in this Festival , the film failed at the box offic . The artistic and technician section were the facets praised by critics , who almost unanimously described it as cold and full of the usual cliches of Coixet's cinema.

The motion picture was leisurely , slowly directed by the Spanish Isabel Coixet , shooting in his ordinary feeling style , such as : A los que aman , Another me, The secret life of words, Things I never told you, Elisa and Mariela, Endless night, The bookshop, his biggest hits were Another me and Elegy with Ben Kingsley. . She is a good professional, a fine craftsman who has directed enjoyable and thoughful films . She often is the camera operator of her movies and founded her own production company, Miss Wasabi Films, in 2000 and was member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival in 2009 . Her interesting filmography includes other feature films , such as : 'Cosas que nunca te dije' (Things I Never Told You) (1995), Elegy (2008), 'Mapa de los sonidos de Tokio' (Map of the Sounds of Tokyo) (2009), and the latest 'Ayer no termina nunca' (Yesterday Never Ends) (2013) besides documentary films, shorts and commercials , such as Proyecto tiempo, El espiritu de la pintura, Sea Aral, Marlango, Marea blanca, Spain in a day and a segment of Paris Je taime , among others. Map of the sounds of Tokyo rating 6/10. Well worth seeing , but only for Isabel Coixet followers .

This had all the credentials to be a memorable film experience.

It's by a Spanish woman who films in Tokyo attempting to have something revealed about women and the erotic mystery, and she is from the most architecturally musical city of Spain, Barcelona. So you'd expect her to have sensitive insights, to be sensitive to place, and for these to be somehow amalgamated into visual music about the yearnings.

Our entry is an inscrutability about women. Why did the ex-girlfriend commit suicide? What lurks behind the silent exterior of the girl who works nights at the fishmarket? A Spanish man has touched both.

So she (the filmmaker) puts inscrutable women at the center, one of them dead, the other an idealized cipher, the dark-haired sullen girl from manga who quietly yearns and destroys herself. She creates an affair that amounts to merely sex, fantasy and waiting for a truth that never comes, the man is just not worth her love, and yet ends it with sacrifice. So poetry about falling for a man who has nothing to give back and being cut deeply when he leaves, a complete tragedy of misspent emotion.

It has some evocative images, it seems you can point a camera anywhere in Tokyo and capture a mood, but it's all stickied to the film like polaroids on a photoalbum, a superficial loneliness to carry back home from the visit; the noodle bar with steam rising from pots, the empty karaoke bar, neon streets and fissures. So much opportunity missed to mingle with things.

So the film here in the same swoop fails to intimately know Japan, fails to know more than heartbreak, and fails to capture a fundamental mystery about touch. It may be that this woman has just not known love or was deeply hurt when she tried and still thinks it was her fault.

'Map of the Sounds of Tokyo' is no Thriller. It's more of a slow drama centering on the young Ryu, that lives a lonely and silent life in the chaos of Tokyo. She spends her nights working on a fish market while from time to time hanging out with another lonely old guy. Her routine is only broken by the casual killings that she performs, though those things never become the center of the story.

Parallel to Ryu we see how the suicide of some girl in the town leaves her father grieving and broken, which is why his subordinate orders Ryu to kill the dead girl's boyfriend David from Spain.

In slow pictures we follow all those connected persons through their daily lives dealing with loneliness and grief. We often hear only the sounds of the city and silence from the protagonists, which helps to understand how lost they all are in this big world. You will not find the good or the bad guy in this piece. Most of the times the atmosphere is rather depressing with only a few glimpses of sunshine here and there, especially when Asian and European culture are opposing each other. I would compare the general feeling and vibe of the movie with Amélie, though the latter one leaves you at least with a smile and some hope at the end.

For me, the key to the movie seems to be that no matter where you are from or what you are doing for a living, we all want and need another person in our life. And also how easy it is to be alone in such a big city full of people like Toyko. And while I like the movie's depth and slowness, it is kind of hard to connect with any of the protagonists. No one is really likable and often they seem so passive about their situations.

Just how life, the movie is not perfect. But it may help you to slow down in this fast and loud world for a little time to value the people around you.

I knew nothing about this film or the director and thus had no expectations. I liked the film's title and the opening scene was very striking. I found the story to be a bit convoluted but was very drawn in by the main character, Ryu and her interactions with the two men in her life, one an enigmatic sound recordist and the other, the Spaniard who was the lover of the woman who killed herself and the man that Ryu is supposed to assassinate. She doesn't reveal herself to either man though both ask her to. So we also have no idea who she really is and why she does what she does. This mystery is part of the genre and as such, I accept it. It makes her all the more vulnerable as she begins to blossom through love's power.

Isabel Coixet is a director I always liked since I saw My Life Without Me (2003)a few years back. Since then I tried to see the rest of her films.

This one just like Elegy (2008), seems to be Coixets attempt at becoming a more mainstream director, a bankable director able to do genre films.

However, Coixet seems very unfamiliar with genrefilmmaking and this film is very flawed, lacks focus and also brings almost nothing new the thriller genre.

Coxiet dramathriller about a Japanese girl who works at the fishmarket and also doubles as an assassin is basically your average story about a lonely assassin doing his/her job without emotion until one day....

Coixet tries to fill this tired, cliché ridden subgenre with filmpoetry, beautiful visuals, odd script and different approach but somewhere leaves the viewer with feeling that she knows almost nothing about this subgenre.

Experimenting with genres, mixing style and content in order to do something new and still stick to genretraditions is one hard thing to do.

Coixet doesn't handle this well, but there are good things to say about Rinko Kikuchis fishmarket girl, Sergi Lópezs wine merchant etc. Coixet has always been good directing actors and once again we get a film full of wonderful performances.

Had Coixet seen Le samouraï (1967), Xich lo/Cyclo (1995), Seom/The Isle (2000)etc we would have probably seen a different film altogether, instead of this flawed film.

However, see this film regardless of what the critics say, it has very nice performances, visuals etc.

And maybe next time Coixet will make a better genrefilm.