Carte des sons de Tokyo

What can I say? The movie did not live up to the promise of its opening scene. It's well-shot and nicely lit, with a few postcard-perfect views of Tokyo, but the story makes no sense, the characters are poorly written, and Sergi Lopez is horribly miscast as the male lead. The ending is a formulaic cop-out.

The trailer tries to sell the movie as a sex thriller, which it's most decidedly not. It's a tale of two lost souls in a big city who try to find solace in each other, but fail, for various reasons.

Rinko Kikuchi performs well as a quiet fish market worker who moonlights as a paid assassin, but her character remains an enigma throughout the movie, which makes it difficult for the audience to connect or empathize with her. She bares her body more than once in fairly explicit sex scenes - and what a nice body it is - one only wishes the director could give us similar insight into her soul.

Sergi Lopez does his usual macho strut with a hint of menace which might have worked in a different movie, but feels utterly out of place in an upscale wine merchant from modern-day Tokyo. He is very unconvincing as Rinko's love interest, and is further hindered by his corpulent, scary hairy physique and significant age difference with his co-star. I could not for the life of me believe in chemistry between the two of them.

The omnipresent narrator, an older sound engineer who maintains chaste friendship with Rinko's character and gives the movie its title, is the most sympathetic of all, but he is more of a convenient voice-over device than a fully-fleshed character. Other parts are one-dimensional at best.

Recommended only for indiscriminate art-house fans, Japan fetishists, and furries.

Well, what can I say? I am Spanish and I am a little familiarized with Japan and Japanese culture, my girlfriend is a Japanese girl living in Tokyo and I have visited the city. In my humble opinion, the portrait of Tokyo in this movie could be one of its limited virtues because at least is trying to show a different point of view focused not only on the typical tourist pictures but also on some not so glamorous places as small restaurants of ramen, a cemetery or a market for selling fish. Soundtrack is interesting and well chosen too, and nothing to complain about photography of the French Jean-Claude Larrieu. About Isabel Coixet, her work as a director is competent and even it has a "touch" more Japanese than Spanish (more concentrated on the silences or natural sounds than the dialogs or artificial noises, for example).

Until here the positive. Now the not so positive, always in my opinion. First, the story. A professional killer falling in love with his (her) victim and breaking his (her) own rules with bad consequences. How many times we have watched this kind of story in a movie? Too many times, I think. Second (and specially), the main actor. Sergi López. He is a respected actor here in Spain, but sorry, to choose him as the man able to light some fire in the cold heart of Ryu is one of the biggest mistakes I have seen in a casting for a movie. Sergi López, let's be honest, is not tall, not sophisticated, too old for Ryu and also scandalously fat for this kind of character. He is not charming, his face is the face of a farmer or a boxer and his voice is annoying in its vulgarity.

Again, sorry Sergi López, but nobody can believe that a very young Japanese girl can kill herself because of you, and also another young girl can fall in love with you until the extreme to risk her own life. Everything in only one month. Wow, are you some kind of Spanish chubby Bond with a special skill for melting Japanese girls? Isabel Coixet is a woman, and it's supposed a clever one. Does she believe the script? I don't believe it! And sorry sorry, even I can't believe López managing a wine shop for gourmet clients in Tokyo.

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.

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 .

'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.