"Japanese Story": film review

Last Sunday (April 16), I saw "Japanese Story", a 2003 film by the Australian director Sue Brooks, on DVD. Toni Colette plays Sandy Edwards, a geologist who works for a coal mining company, recently purchased by the Japanese. The Head Office sends over Hiromitsu, a young sarariman, to familiarize himself with the new acquisition and Sandy is told to pick him up at the airport and drive him to the coal mine, which is somewhere in the middle of a god-forsaken desert. Thus enfolds an archetypal story of a culture clash that turns first into a hope-inducing cultural thesis-antithesis-synthesis and finally into a downbeat meditation on the difficulties of cultural outreach.

With the clueless Hiromitsu insisting—over the protests of Sandy, whom he perhaps is unable to take very seriously—that he be taken to a part of the mine that can only be reached by a dirt road, their SUV gets stuck. There is no one to help for miles around. Their cell phones can't find a network. They must light fires and try to sleep in the freezing desert night and then try to free the car again next morning. In this way, this odd couple is thrown together in the middle of the desert, forced to help each other and to rely on each other. Gradually the cultural walls between them disintegrate and they fall very naturally and sweetly in love.

Then, out of the blue, disaster strikes. The giddy and squealing Sandy races towards and then dives into a shallow, muddy pool of water, and before she can warn Hiromitsu about the shallowness of the pond, he dives in too. Possibly having hit his head on the floor of the pond with the force of a vigorous dive, Hiromitsu dies. His wife comes from Japan to take the body home. She sees the pictures of Hiromitsu and Sandy, ecstatic together in the vast Australian desert. Nevertheless, the film ends in a respectful—perhaps even friendly—parting at the airport between Sandy and Hiromitsu's wife, who hands over the pictures to the deeply apologetic Sandy and leaves with a sincere "Thank you".

The film is beautifully acted and directed. But the third act (Hiromitsu's death and after) left me bored. It is undoubtedly legitimate for a film to take a hesitant view of the possibilities for a genuine bridging of the East-West gap, but unfortunately the film doesn't have any interesting observations on that theme: it is content to simply assert that theme.

Finally, let me touch upon this film's distinctive approach to the intimate scenes between Hiromitsu and Sandy. There are perhaps just two of these scenes and they are very understated. What struck me as exceptional, however, was the reversal of roles in these scenes. The slightly built and delicate-looking Hiromitsu lies absolutely motionless and expressionless on the ground, with only his eyes—wide open and very still—expressing some desire and anticipation, while Sandy, who is physically the bigger and built, as they say, like a truck, crouches over him and gradually lowers her body to his.