Japanese Story

Directed by Sue Brooks

Australia, 2003

Romantic, mysterious, charming—those are the first words I find for Japanese Story, an Australian film directed by Sue Brooks and written by Alison Tilson. The unfolding events are simple enough: Sandy, an unmarried geologist who leads a dreary life of eating canned food, drinking instant coffee, and fending off her overbearing mother, is assigned by the mining company she works for to play driver and host to Hiromitsu, a Kyoto businessman. Her firm hopes to sell him designer software that beautifully maps the lands to be excavated. The guest takes more of an interest in excursions to remote countryside. His foolhardy insistence on outback detours strands driver and passenger in the desert. After a series of dusty adventures, the initially quarrelsome associates become lovers. Their mutual conquest deepens into an exploration as unanticipated as it is erotically spiritual, and that’s probably more than you should know.

With stunning cinematography (by Ian Baker) of the Australian wilds, Japanese Story recalls Peter Weir’s enigmatic Picnic at Hanging Rock, although this film is much more direct emotionally. And while I’m hesitant to draw comparisons between Japanese Story and The Virgin Spring, the Brooks/Tilson duet shares with the Bergman film a kind of purity yielded from devastation. The director and the scenarist portray complex emotion with a depth that movies seldom honor. For example, after Sandy and Hiromitsu have slept together a few times, she notices a photo in his wallet—a make no mistake snapshot of spouse and children. “Do you love your wife?” she asks unemphatically. “No need to say it,” he replies following a short pause. “When you say it, not so true.”

In the leads, Toni Collette and Gotaro Tsunashima give performances that are as good as drama ever gets. Collette is brilliant in a physically exacting role, and as her less showy counterpart, Tsunashima is no less miraculous. Brooks directs Tilson’s observant screenplay with absolute authority. If there’s a flaw to be found, it’s in the sticky, Eastern-flavored pop music that cadges a bit toward the sentimental. Japanese Story opened in New York in January, one month too late to qualify for 2003 awards consideration and eleven months too early to be remembered for ’04 nominations. Never mind those stupid statuettes. Japanese Story stands as one of the finest films of last, this, or any year. See it. – NPT

January 28, 2004

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