daiskeyoshida

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. Some viewers say it ridicules the Japanese, but it's the most honest portrayal I can recall about the experience of visiting Japan; to me it was a little like going home. It truly captures the country's combination of beauty in many different forms (neon, temples, bars) and impenetrability (same). This provides the ideal setting for a story about two people who feel alienated from their spouses and the world around them; Japan provides a nice expression for the alienation because it is *so* different, but this also leads our two protagonists together. The film is not really about Japan, but about the joy of miraculously finding emotional connection with a total stranger, and the sad realization that the feeling cannot last. The film's success in capturing this fleeting emotion -- the knowledge that there really cannot be "More Than This" as Bob sings in a karaoke booth -- displays a much deeper appreciation for Japanese culture, than if the film unnaturally were to include politically-correct balancing by, e.g., providing a tall Japanese guide who is fluent in English and can pronounce "R" and "L."

I don't know whether the humor in this film will translate in Japan (actually, the Japanese interpreter's ineptitude, the "conversation" with the old man in the hospital, and the TV show are even funnier in Japanese), but I imagine that people everywhere can appreciate the odd romance at its core.

I remember seeing this movie in 1990 in a tiny cinema in London, on a date. As we walked from the theater and got on the tube, neither of us said a word for 20 minutes. Finally, she said, "you have a strange taste in films."

Back then, I was heavily into Luis Bunuel. This was one of the few post-Bunuel movies that embodied the essential creepiness and odd humor of the Surrealists (the other one that comes to mind is "Videodrome"). There's the obvious Freudian stuff, the obvious shock stuff, but leaving all that aside, there are indelible moments of cinematic poetry. The elephant; the son's arms; the final shot. It feels, more than 10 years later, like a repressed dream/nightmare.

I don't consider this a "horror" movie, in the sense that there are no slasher, monster, alien, demon, zombie, cannibal, haunted house, supernatural, dread disease, or giallo elements. I don't remember this movie being particularly scary or gory; just creepy. Maybe it's in a similar genre to "Eyes Without a Face," but only in the sense that both movies deal with mutilation and revenge. (Then again, I remember seeing "Un Chien Andalou" and "In the Realm of the Senses" in the horror section of a video store -- a sign of either ignorance or insight, I could never figure out.) This one truly belongs in the Foreign Films section, but not just for being non-Hollywood.