Tokyo Story

What happened to Alain Corneau? Back in the 1970s, he directed the sublimely dark Série Noire, easily one of the best French films of the decade (and one that badly needs to be resurrected). Best known in the states for 1991's crowd-pleasing, Tous les Matins du Monde, his films have gone from the hard- to the soft-boiled. (Filmbrain has yet to see the 1995 James Gandolfini/Alicia Silverstone vehicle, Le Nouveau Monde.) When Filmbrain heard that Corneau had adapted Amélie Nothomb's autobiographical novella Stupeur et Tremblements, he was curious, to say the least. Would he be able to turn this brief first-person narrative into a successful film, and would he be able to make Nothomb's Japanese characters be something other than the ridiculous caricatures that they are in the novel? The answer is no, and no. Fear and Trembling (as it's called here) is an autobiographical account of Ms. Nothomb's experience working for a large Japanese firm in Tokyo when she was twenty-one. Though hired as an interpreter, she was never given any work of that sort, and the story chronicles her downward spiral from coffee girl to toilet cleaner. The entire novella is set in the office, and the story is told primarily through interior monologue -- there are only a few scenes of actual dialog. This is the first (and major) problem with the film -- about 70% of it is voiceover, and actress Sylvie Testud is simply reciting verbatim the lines from the book. Filmbrain is a hardly a Robert McKee acolyte -- he believes that voiceover can be wonderful in the right hands (read: Scorsese) -- but using it to the extent that Corneau does (he wrote the screenplay as well) shows either laziness on his part, a lack of creativity, or simply a case of a book not suitable for filming. The end result is more like a book-on-tape, with pictures. It's a very flat film in this regard, and the only saving grace is Testud's performance, which is quite good, even beyond her ability to speak near-perfect Japanese. (She was awarded the César for best actress this year.) Unfortunately, this isn't the only the problem with the film. There is another, more complicated issue. When Amélie first arrives at the company, she is introduced to her boss, Fubuki, an untypically tall, beautiful Japanese woman that Amélie immediately adores. Though things seem fine at first, it's not long before they wind up in a Hegelian master-servant relationship. And though Amélie is continually on the receiving end of humiliation and scorn, she still defends and admires Fubuki. While this is a theme that has been explored successfully in other films, the problem here is that Fubuki, like all the bosses in the film, are nothing more than caricatures that are brimming with stereotypical behaviors that border on being racist. They scream and grunt at Amélie, psychologically and physically menace her, and even threaten her when she refuses to eat a piece of chocolate -- and they do all this with glee. Amélie Nothomb was born in Japan, and spent part of her childhood there. It was her love of the country that took her back there at twenty-one. As she says in the book, she wanted to be Japanese, and this is her justification for submitting to all the abuse. "Anyone else in my situation would have quit. But not if they were Japanese. ... I would survive. I would do what a Japanese would have done." Yet if she so adores the country, its culture, and its people, why paint virtually every Japanese character as a sadistic puppet? While it might work in the novel for comic effect, it's a bit disconcerting on the screen. Being a foreigner in a Japanese corporation can be a harrowing, frustrating experience (Filmbrain worked at one in Tokyo, years ago), and it's clear that Ms. Nothomb landed in a particularly tough environment. But does that justify her often grotesque portraits? Filmbrain doesn't wish to come right out and accuse the film of being racist -- that's rather pointless. Corneau takes Nothomb at her word, and the film seems guiltier of ignorance than malicious intent. (Filmbrain is curious to know if those that found Lost in Translation offensive feel the same way about Fear and Trembling.) It is interesting to note, however, that the only scene from the novella not present in the film is one in which a fellow European (a Dutch man) is shown in an embarrassing light -- he has bad body odor from excessive sweat. Was Corneau not comfortable with this scene, or did he feel it just wasn't necessary? Fear and Trembling hasn't been released in Japan (it did play at one festival), and one can only wonder if it ever will. Regardless of whether or not you find the film racist, offensive, or simply exaggerated for comic effect, it is the dependency on and overuse of voiceover that ultimately destroys it. Perhaps Corneau's intention was to build the film around Sylvie Testud's performance -- but even that is not enough to make the film particularly interesting. The novella can be read in about the same time it takes to watch the film. Filmbrain's advice? Read the book instead. Filmbrain would love to hear from others who have seen the film.

Comments

[Steve]

I found FEAR AND TREMBLING more problematic than LOST IN TRANSLATION. In LIT, Coppola divides the world into hipsters (her 2 protagonists, basically) and goofballs. Practically all the Japanese characters are goofballs, but so are plenty of Caucasians, like the airhead actress. There's not much sense in F&T of a world outside Nothomb's perceptions, to put it mildly. Her boss, in particular, comes across like a dragon lady stereotype. However, I found the homoerotic/SM overtones pretty interesting, although it didn't need to rub them in my face with the MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE reference.

Corneau has a reputation for neo-Tradition of Quality films, and little of his work has sounded interesting to me. This, at least, was something different. I've never seen a film so preoccupied with office work, and I think there may be something tonic about it in a culture where movies rarely deal with the workplace. ]

Having worked in Japan, does anything in the film ring true? Does it, in part, describe universal conditions of office politics?

[Filmbrain]

Thanks for the interesting comment, Steve.

What rings true is the concept of hierarchy in a company. It is impossible to go above your immediate boss, something people don't think twice about in this country. That would be scandalous, and would probably result in your getting chewed out.

While there certainly is a sense of suspicion towards foreigners, this idea of being told NOT to speak Japanese is ludicrous.

Though Fubuki's situation is a sad truth for some women (career + being 29 and not married), it's a tired stereotype to portray such a woman as a dragon lady.

[nicolas]

It's difficult to sort out your critics, and I have trouble to understand if you're speaking about the book or the movie, especially when it comes to denouncing the offensive material (if so). While I agree that the book is poorly adapted, and that it often feels like a visual book (instead of an audio book), with a skillful reader (Sylvie Testud), I am not so sure about the film / the book being offensive or flirting with racism. And if so, it doesn't really bother me since the movie is openly / supposedly comic (given the caricaturial material, which is present in the book and in the movie). We're both, Filmbrain, critical viewers and we both understand that this is a caricature: Amelie san is the narrator and the events she describes could result of her own fantasy (she has many dreams and visions after all). You describe the book of Amelie Nothomb as autobiographical, but this is a novel as well. The tone of "Fear and Trembling" is deliberately meant to be offensive, and that's a common ground for all of her novels. I didn't consider her story too "seriously", and enjoyed the humor. As for "Lost in translation", it's certainly not offensive, and well done, though I didn't really get why people liked it so much.

I wonder sometime if you're not just trying to find evil where there is not (clearly I have no clue why Corneau didn't mention the Dutch guy in the movie, neither do you). Maybe you need to relax a bit. That's what I do when I watch the Daily show making fun of the French / French language, for instance.

[Filmbrain]

While I don't disagree with anything you say, Nicolas, I still think there is a slight danger in simply lifting her ideas, words, etc. and putting pictures to them. Yes, it is a novel, but she has always been very open about how truthful it is. Clearly, a lot of it stems out of her own problems. As a former anorexic, she has said time and time again that she is disgusted with fat people -- and one can see that by reading both this book as well as Hygiène de l'assassin. So it's one thing for her to write a book and exaggerate the characters in order to make the book more successful, entertaining, etc. But to make a film out of that -- suddenly it's not Nothomb's reflections anymore, but Corneau's interpretation of them. The problem, as I said, is that he didn't do anything with them, just visualized them, nothing more.

How much do you think people know about life in Japan, or life at a Japanese corporation? Might not this film taint someone's view? Isn't it just giving credence to many stereotypes that exist about Japan? I continually finding myself asking how other directors (from both France and other nations) would have approached this.

I really think Corneau was a bit irresponsible in his handling of this.

[nicolas]

I know you read the book, so let me ask you this question: your critics deal with the actual content of the book, though you address them to Corneau and his movie. Why is it ok for people to read the book, and not ok to see the movie, since every monologue and the very little pieces of dialog are identical to the book's material?

If I were speaking of the book, I could literally copy and paste your last remark "Might not the book taint someone's view? Isn't it just giving credence to many stereotypes that exist about Japan". So why is it ok for the book, not for the movie? Do you actually consider that movies have more influence (if any) than books? If this is true that the movie play with stereotypes, I don't consider it dangerous since the stereotypes were already there long before the book was even written, and nothing bad happened. We're always the stereotype of somebody, and that's ok. Having stereotypes is somewhat harmless. And I didn't hear you scream, for instance, when Michael Moore used gross stereotypes to describe the coalition in Iraq (remember Palau and Morocco?), which I think surpassed in less than 30 seconds what Fear and Trembling did in 2 hours.

However, though the movie hasn't been released in Japan (but I rather think that it's because of its mediocre quality, rather than its offensive material), the book has actually been translated into Japanese and some Japanese women relate to it (for what I read).

A link on a strange interview I found on internet (the inetrviewer didn't buy her story as completely true):
http://univers.mylene-farmer.com/nothomb/chricharette.htm

[Filmbrain]

Interesting interview. I like how the interviewer says straight out that she doesn't believe the story.

I think that Nothomb really doesn't have an understanding of Japanese women, or at least her conclusions are based off her limited experiences, and what she says pretty much fits the stereotype. She says: "Je me suis soumise, parce qu'une femme japonaise se soumet..." -- isn't that more of a generalization than a fact?

As for the difference between people reading the book vs. seeing the film -- that's a topic that we could spend hours on, and much has been written on this subject in general. (Think of DeSade for a moment.) Given her undying insistence that this is all true, we can read the book as a the ravings of a lunatic, a madwoman, or simply think she's racist. But when the work goes into the hands of another, acted out by real people, suddenly things shift quite a bit.

I think what's frustrating is that the film is not an adaptation -- Corneau took no stance, no position on the work. He just filmed it.

The Michael Moore comment is just silly. You can't really claim some stock footage to be more offensive than the real human caricatures in Corneau's film.

[Steve]

Actually, I do find some of Moore's material, especially the "Shiny Happy People" montage in F 9/11, as offensive as anything in FEAR AND TREMBLING. But it lasts 30 seconds, as do the French jokes on THE DAILY SHOW, while Corneau has made a whole film about how weird and fucked-up the Japanese are.

I haven't read the novel, so I can't comment on the way that the stereotypes play differently in print and on film. However, I think the film suffers from sticking so close to Amelie's point of view. Sure, the characters are obviously exaggerated, colored to some extent by her preconceptions. But there's never any suggestion that she's really wrong about them or that she's misperceiving them through a prejudiced filter.

[nicolas]

hmmm, again, the movie is poorly adapted. However, not sure why "things shift a bit" when scenes from the book are "acted out by real people". The movie is not promoted as a documentary, but as a (comic) fiction - even with "real people" a fiction remains a fiction -, and the audience is aware of that fact (unliked F9/11 which is promoted as a documentary, and is not, but maybe is it also silly to underline this as well). As for "how weird and fucked up the japanese are" in the movie, well, I've just made my point by adding "in the movie". If you don't like the book, or if you don't like the movie, that's all right (I liked the book, and think the movie is forgettable). But the fact one would consider this movie offensive (or worse) is perhaps related to one's culture and history. As Americans, you may feel a bit guilty about making fun of Japanese (which is understandable). I guess that in Europe, we don't feel that way. And we wouldn't really care if Japanese make fun of us (and they do). What surprises me Filmbrain, is that you liked Spike Lee's last movie, and were not outraged. His movie is full of stereotypes (though I personally think that's the main topic of his movie).

PS: my Japanese girlfriend was offended by "Lost In Translation" (not sure I am able to explain why), and not by "Fear and Trembling".

PS2: I make fun of Japanese, she makes fun of French, and we both make fun of Americans ;)

[Filmbrain]

I don't think my disapproval of making fun of the Japanese stems from my being American, or from carrying any guilt. I don't like when anybody makes a film that is so naive in its portrayal of another country/culture. It's one thing to consciously make a parody, or even criticism for political reasons, but to not even realize how offensive it is -- that's what upsets me.

I think Steve's final sentence, above, is exactly what's wrong with the film. That's not a problem with the novel, cause it's all first person and clearly her.

I have yet to talk to your girlfriend about Fear and Trembling, though I look forward to it. I don't recall her being offended by Lost in Translation -- a bit embarrassed, perhaps, but not offended.