Film: In the realm of the senseless

Japanese Story

By Robert Chancey

Armed with inexact artistic instincts, writer Alison Tilson and director Sue Brooks could be mistaken for idyll-hating travel agents and Taliban-loving feminists. Their movie, Japanese Story, pretends to be a probing glimpse into the peculiarities of Japanese and Australian cultures and a searing exploration of the hermaphroditic implications of sex between a reserved Asian man and a brazen Western woman.

But it employs a dramatic device so tawdry that a meretricious author like Jackie Collins might chunder at the thought of manipulating audiences so ruthlessly. Even worse, Tilson and Brooks have no qualms updating the misogyny of Henry James' Portrait of a Lady: They take a vibrant, headstrong woman (Toni Collette's Sandy Edwards) and reduce her to a whimpering, muted shadow after a tragic encounter with a more ancient culture. This is gynocentric panic wed to a fuzzy feminism. According to these female filmmakers, brassy equals unrelenting, stubborn equals sullen and assertive equals irritable.

Sandy is a partner in Baird and Edwards, a Sydney software firm. Because she is single and Bill Baird (Matthew Dyktynski) aspires to be a doting father, Sandy is forced to accompany Japanese client Tachibana Hiromitsu (Gotaro Tsunashima) across the Western Australian frontier. Initially, these two wary strangers drive silently to their various destinations, but eventually Sandy introduces Tachibana to the splendors of the Australian bush--and the uncommon beauty of the wilderness.

Japanese Story wants viewers to exult in the liberating thrill of immersing oneself in a foreign culture, but its stab at profundity is Sandy explaining the difference in pronunciation between "desert" and "dessert." Unimaginative in their observations and obvious in their emotional epiphanies, Tilson and Brooks have served up cross-cultural fare that is dull, sincere and flavorless--like sushi sold at Wal-Mart.