FEAR AND TREMBLING (Stupeur et tremblements)
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten Cinema Guild Grade: B Directed by: Alain Corneu Written by: Alain Corneu, novel by Amelie Nothomb Cast: Sylvie Testud, Kaori Tsuji, Taro, Suwa, Bison Katayama, Yasunai Kondo, Sokyu Fujita, Gen Shimaoka, Heileigh Gomes, Eri Sakai Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 9/23/04
If you get to Thailand, don't cross your legs. The Thais, contrary to us in the United States, do not lightly take the sight of your heel pointed at them. When in Singapore, don't chew gum. You'll get arrested. In Japan, if you're asked in what direction New York might be, you point westward. The Japanese guy simply looks at your finger. Consider this. A visitor from Vanuatu comes to your home and raises his middle finger at you. You'd toss him right out, wouldn't you? And yet to residents of Vanuatu, a raised middle finger means, "Hi, how's it going?" (Not really.) While it's a small world after all, people really do have customs different from yours. Consider the situation of young Amelie (Sylvie Testud), a Belgian woman born in Japan. You'd figure that when she got a one-year contract as a Japanese-to-French translator for a large corporation, she'd have little trouble with cultural differences, particularly she's among the few Westerners who can speak fluent Japanese. Yet by a series of cultural missteps, she is regularly abused, which satisfies her martyr complex, and ultimately makes her a winner during the final moments of the story.
"Fear and Trembling" is adapted from a novel by Amelie Nothomb who bases her fictional account on her actual adventures working for the Tokyo-based company. Though hired as a translator, her supervisors in the office don't know what to do with her. One guy puts her to work photocopying a book-list series of papers, but complains so loudly that the entire office can hear him that the copies are off-center. "Do them again." Each time she does them, she gets the same response, even when she follows the advice of this Mr. Saito (Taro Suwa) to copy each page individually.
She is then put to work as the coffee-and-tea girl, memorizing what each employee on the floor likes (green tea, black coffee, coffee two milks and two sugars), but when she hands out coffee to the company's customers in a meeting room, speaking softly to each fellow in Japanese, she is chastised vigorously by the 300-pound Mr. Omochi (Bison Katayama). The customers did not like the idea that a foreigner knows the language and can presumably steal secrets!
On and on got the missteps, but her major relationship is with her immediate supervisor, Fubuki (Kaori Tsiuji), a 29-year-old whom Amalie considers absolutely beautiful, a metaphor example of the beauty of Japan itself. When that relationship turns sour, Amelie is determined to fulfill her year's contract no matter what lowly job she is given.
Sylvie Testud is a marvel. To prepare for this role she studied Japanese for two months, eight hours a day, so that if you close your eyes you'd swear she is speaking like a native. What director Alain Corneau brings across in hsi film is that in this (late) coming-of-age tale, a 20-something woman thrust into a foreign culture gets to know more about herself, about her abilities and her failings, and paradoxically by accepting everything thrown at her humbly with a deep bow, she is actually losing the battle but will win the match. The novel she wrote after her experience proves this.
While the picture is funny and charming during the first half, it turns dark later on. One can scarcely believe the kind of contempt the local supervisors dish out to the Western appendage, one fellow even laughing out loud like a hyena and blowing his nose in front of Amelie. This sort of behavior is deeply frowned upon by the Japanese society, while perfectly acceptable in the U.S., making nose-blower Omochi's actions a symbol of the most extreme humiliation for Amelie. In fact the title of the film comes from an adage that when Japan was ruled by an emperor, subjects given an audience would approach him with fear and trembling.
Though work involves people in the U.S. and Japan for eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, few films take place completely in the work environment. "Office Space" comes to mind as does "Bartleby." The serious film-goer can but hope that more such movies hit the screens in the years ahead, reflecting the experience that most of us have for a large segment of our lives.
Not Rated. 102 minutes © Harvey Karten at harveycritic@cs.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 39092 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1342924 X-RT-TitleID: 1139118 X-RT-SourceID: 570 X-RT-AuthorID: 1123 X-RT-RatingText: B
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews