AshUnow
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Neive Bellamy
Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
Deanna
There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
curtisedlin
Japanese Story is a fantastic Indie film. I was actually required to watch this film for a nonverbal communication course in college. I am quite happy that this film was chosen to be analyzed, otherwise I may have not seen it. Not only did this film teach me more about nonverbal interactions but also benefited me as a filmmaker. As an aspiring director and cinematographer, analyzing films is the best kind of homework. If you have not seen this film, I recommend you to watch it. Right from the beginning the film had me fully immersed into the story. It was almost as if there was a mystery was hidden in the plot that kept me intrigued. This film has a well written story with a major twist in the plot that you will never see coming!
brimon28
Having seen this film at first release in a cinema, and enjoyed it, I was somewhat disturbed by some negative posts on this page. When the opportunity arose to see it on TV, then, I viewed it again. It's a bit more mysterious than I was aware of at first viewing. This could be because the two versions are different cuts. Perhaps the sound was better on my home cinema than I recall from the hardtop. Certainly, the story was well set in the opening scenes, when it is obvious that Sandy, the female IT specialist, is coming off an unsatisfactory relationship. As one of her colleagues remarks: "I don't know how anybody could do it with him". We then are aware that Sandy is "on the rebound" from that relationship. The unpleasantness of that experience is not helped by her being told to escort a visitor, Hiro, on a sightseeing trip for which neither is well prepared. This is where things get complicated. Sandy is a female in the blokey environment of outback mining, where the usual job for a woman is driving a large earthmover. Hiro treats her, not as a professional, but as his driver. On the phone he describes her to his wife as "She has a big bum and she talks loudly". When it becomes obvious that Hiro is clueless about outback motoring in his demand to be taken to inaccessible places, he secretively peruses Sandy's guidebook. At the same time, Sandy hides her Japanese phrase book inside a magazine. Their communication level in zilch. Sandy does most of the right things when they get into trouble, not knowing that Hiro has read at least one trick to get them going. Or does she deliberately leave that trick out of her lexicon? In any event, the episode does improve their communication level. To some, that is a mystery. In the finale, we see one of the basic rules of drama. Conflict is followed by changes in the characters. Sandy is less uptight, and we become aware that Hiro was in love with his wife all along. That is the mystery in "the letter". Why did Hiro's wife give Sandy the letter? We don't know, but remember that we have here a woman director and a woman writer. In any case, the wife and Sandy reconcile, as I suppose, two intelligent women would do in the circumstances. Viewers might care to check the lengths of the original film and the video version. This is a very watchable movie.
feczo
Weak plot, no character development, seriously dumb dialogs. The male main character is a shame for all men and as previously mentioned its a humiliation of the Japanese: he shows weakness so many times it is very annoying, (spoiler alert) even in the "sex scene" I felt he is being raped by the female character. I did not even get how these two developed any chemistry over extremely silly conversations, the intellectual level was like listening to 4 year old not adults. The only value in the film is some nice scenic shots, however it dragged out the movie which made it even more boring. The closing scene is completely illogical. I do not get how could this receive so many Australian awards ( I live in Australia for the last 3 years) it is not even a good film on the Australian scene, watch Candy if you would like to see a good OZ movie, but this is outrageously horrible, I wish I could vote 0 to drop the current rating even more.
YouHadMeAtDolphins
Oh well. Talk about trying to be "Walkabout" and "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and completely failing. Sure, the script must have been good reading, so you would think with the right director and the right film crew this would turn out to be OK, but no, this is what you call poorly executed and poorly conceived. I do understand what it was trying to say, but I just think that the whole of the first half should've been done with much more attention to the detail of the characters' feelings and dug deeper into their emotions further. I think the director has good intentions but did not quite deliver on this part. The film should've been called "Australian Story" to make more sense of the lopsided and biased view of what the Aussies perceive to be the strange cultural behaviour of the Japanese - after all, the whole film depends upon a Western view of the woman looking at this strange man from the Far East who seem to have no cause or reason to be wandering about the Outback other than the fact that he can. Whether the last third of the film explains his reasons for being there or not, the film should've focused much more on what she needs, what she is experiencing and should've explained a lot more of her backstory of who she is as an Aussie geologist, rather than let them both be strangely stranded "tourists" who are seeking for some sort of direction from the plot!!! The performances were stilted and without much heart, Collette looked like she was just sort of skimming through all of her scenes and dialogue as if she was rather not bothered about being in this film. Tsunashima did his best to behave like the Japanese caricature that the filmmaker wanted, and of course same goes for the wife and the whole setup in the last third of the film. At the end, I wandered why they bothered to make this film at all, as it probably reads much better than it does as a film. Perhaps if another, more accomplished artist's hands had got hold of it, the film would've turned out to be an interesting film in character study, but the photography is bland, the music is typically "American Beauty" ripped and tinny, and the direction and editing are completely unimaginative. They could've done so much with some truly spaced-out scenes of desperation in the dessert, but somehow everything is conveniently moved along and that only leaves the viewer scratching their heads wandering why they bothered at all. The film tries to drive some meaning into the reasons for these two to be out there in the wild for emptiness in significance of their own lives, but the cultural complications are brushed aside because the filmmakers do not quite get why there is any of that sort of experience in the first place for these characters who should not have had any need to spend any time out there at all. For Collette's character to give in to his demands so easily after having said her piece about not going out there, and then to complain about what he did to them out there, and then not to explain why she even has this job and what it really means - might have been a much more interesting film if the Japanese guy had to find his own way around, and had met a strange woman in the desert with whom he plays, instead of having this geologist lead the way. Poor poor effort.
