tripu

Believe me, I was not wearing my Japanophile’s hat when I entered the cinema. I did a conscious effort to look at the screen in the same way I thought my friends were going to look at it. I didn’t nudge them and whispered the toponyms that, who knows why, are lacking in the story. I tried to see pachinko, love hotels and women-only carriages as if it were the first time. A story in Tokyo… What an exotic country, wonder what it’ll be like. So far away, isn’t it? Must be an amazing culture. Well, let’s see.

Still, Isabel Coixet‘s Map of the sounds of Tokyo fails to tell an engaging story; it is rather boring. If her intention was to leave spectators ‘craving for sex and sushi’ (sex and ramen, at any rate), it didn’t work for me.

As UnGatoNipón pointed out, dialogues are poor in general, and sometimes plainly silly. Long still shot. Silence. ‘Do you want a strawberry mochi?’ ‘No.’ Silence. ‘I can go and buy some, it’s no problem.’ ‘No.’ Long silence. If that is supposed to capture some profound, centuries-old Japanese introspective philosophy, I don’t get it.

And what with the dubbing. If it is usually just criminal the way most foreign films are butched and re-interpreted here in Spain (Spain hasn’t had a head of government who was fluent in any other language but Spanish for decades; certainly not during the current democratic period) the case with Map of the sounds of Tokyo, being it a Spanish film, is especially sad. The character of David is a Spaniard who has been living in Tokyo for two years and whose Japanese is, as he admits, not good. He’s supposed to speak in English with the Japanese characters. All that is dubbed into Spanish in the version that is being shown in Spanish cinemas, but from time to time there are words or common expressions that are spoken in Japanese.

Not only that, but it seems that the producers didn’t bother editing the subtitles appropriately: when David tells his colleague that Midori’s father called him baka (stupid) once, Sergi López is pronouncing the word in Spanish, and at the same time we read it in a subtitle in Spanish, which is quite confusing. Although I suspect that is a timing issue, and that subtitle is supposed to appear when the Japanese character repeats the word in Japanese.

What is even worse is that, as anyone who ever has had to move around Japan using English knows, communication in English with the Japanese is, more often than not, quite difficult. If, as it is claimed, Tokyo is a necessary protagonist in the story, i.e. if the same tale wouldn’t be conceivable in Lisbon or in Jakarta, you can’t avoid the issue of communication altogether.

The writer makes an attempt at disentangling clichés about Japan and the Japanese, but it seems to me that she only skims the surface, sometimes rather explicitly. David tells Ryu that in essence the Japanese are no different from his own people; and at the beginning, Midori’s father expresses his disgust about the flamboyant evening that has to be arranged to please his foreign business partners. But Coixet falls short of tackling those issues, and her Tokyoites appear as silent, shy, lonely ghosts with an unfathomable interest for the weirdest activities.

The worst thing about the movie is that it’s very slow, and so quiet. To me, Tokyo is a city of words, both written and spoken. It is a loud city. It is what Paul Waley calls ‘Tokyo as textual city’. I think that is why this representation of Tokyo doesn’t look realistic at all.

The scene when Bill Murray sings More than this at the karaoke… Sorry — I mean, the scene when Sergi López sings Enjoy the silence at the karaoke doesn’t convey any melancholy, and for me it was ridiculous.

To me, the first scene in the love hotel was everything but exciting. Maybe the others were a bit more evocative. Sex scenes were brave and sincere, that I must admit.

From the soundtrack, only One dove by Antony & the Johnsons makes the cut for me.

Bonus: if you really want a tender, funny, surprising film that leaves you craving for ramen and sex, go and watch Tampopo (1985). Here, an appetizer for the ramen part of it; here, something about the sex… and also food.