Fear and Trembling (2003)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Admirable film.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

I was shocked at many of the reactions to this film, as a lot of folks really liked it, some felt it was a comedy and some felt that the Japanese business people in this film were racist or unfair towards the lead, Amelie. I just thought she was a horrible employee who blundered into the Japanese business world without doing her homework and wanted it to change to suit her. Frankly, from what I saw in the film, I would assume that she wouldn't have fit in at any company in Belgium, either. Because of this, I had a hard time caring about this lady and felt that a look at how different Japanese business culture is from the West was totally obscured. When the film begins, newly graduated Amelie begins work at a Japanese company. Apparently, she'd been born in Japan and longed to return there and make a success of herself in the country. However, almost from the start, she makes mistake after mistake-- some of which she might have avoided if she asked her supervisor for clarification or if she'd bothered to learn ANYTHING about the culture. It's very odd that someone who was born in the country and lived there until age 5 would know practically nothing about the Japanese business world. Sadly, it also appeared as if she really didn't want to know as well.When Amelie makes mistakes, her usual way of dealing with it is to argue with her bosses, make excuses and view herself as some sort of martyr. In fact, in a particularly tasteless part of the film, she compares her plight to those murdered by the Japanese during WWII. How do war crimes somehow seem to be the same as a boss yelling at her (usually after she did something that showed that she was either woefully ignorant of the company culture)?Oddly, the film was designed as some sort of indictment of the Japanese. I was flabbergasted by this. My daughter (who studied in Japan) and wife (who worked in corporate America and spent time in Japan doing business) were also shocked by this and found Amelie to be thoroughly unprofessional and unlikable...and didn't understand so many of her complaints about the Japanese business people. And, the movie's attempts to get the audiences to dislike these Japanese people seemed contemptible and racist. Despite the film begin technically well made, its message just seemed ugly and self- absorbed. The story is apparently autobiographical and the author clearly was in love with herself throughout the entire film. She also, in a very, very ugly finale, seemed gleeful that her old supervisor was 'old' and unmarried by the end of the film while SHE was a successful author who now was obtaining revenge on her old company with her book! How incredibly ugly--and I resent being a pawn in her strange revenge fantasy.

Having been born in Japan, a young Belgian woman spends a year working for a large corporation in Tokyo. This is an enjoyable comedy about culture clash. Although she is obviously smart and driven, Amelie is given menial jobs in the Japanese company because she must earn her way up the corporate ladder. While there appear to be truths in the portrayal of the Japanese hierarchical structure, the filmmakers stress their points here by turning the Japanese characters into caricatures. In contrast to her one-dimensional Japanese co-workers, Testud creates a likable and sympathetic character who is determined to succeed despite the mistreatment by her superiors.

I picked up the DVD because of the introduction seems funny. After half of the film, I was wondering why I was still watching it. By curiosity, I decided to finish the film. And I was almost angry at myself why I wasted another hour of my life. It is a very badly made, no-story film. The film set is so far away from the reality, does not looks like a real office. It is hard to fall in love with the main character, almost to the point that you just don't care about this girl, she does nothing to change her misery. And the scene in which she trips herself naked and dance in the office looks really stupid and useless. On top of it, she put the garbage cover herself and sleep on the floor for the night. What does the filmmaker want to say about the personality. Amelie is not lovely, smart, and daring. What is her charm?What is the point of the film? The reality of working in a Japanese company as a foreigner? Who put up with all the abuse and still decides to stay in such a working environment does not deserve any pity. It is nothing to do with the difference between western and eastern culture. No company wants to waste their money to hire someone to do nothing. Japan has very limited resource, people hate wasting. A boss would keep wasting his employee's time and papers, it is hard to believe. They might love to torture this little Belgian girl but they would not like to waste their papers. In general, it is hard to believe that the rating of this film in IMDb is 7.1.

"I had, outside the company, an existence far from empty or insignificant. I decided not to speak of it here…eleven metro stations from there, was a place where (Japanese) liked me, respected me, and saw no rapport at all between a toilet brush and me" (my awkward translation from p. 159-160, Stupeur et tremblements, Editions Albin Michel S.A., 1999). The novel's barely 200 pages of largish print. Nearly all of the movie's events have already gone down by the time Nothomb pauses to excuse the world outside la compagnie Yumimoto. Two years have passed since I saw the film, and two weeks since I read the novel. I can't recall whether the admission made it into the film. If so, it may been too easy to miss in the general downward rush.My overwhelming reaction to the film, and somewhat less so to the novel, was a confusion of annoyance with and embarrassment for Amélie. Again and again, not so unlike a horror movie heroine stupidly wandering into dark places alone, she does what even we totally out of it in the audience can see is going to be the wrong thing. Again and again, I asked myself: Why can't she bide her time awhile, watch and learn? Of course she couldn't. They wouldn't let her. But still, as least as Sylvie Testud plays her, she might have gotten on even Westerners' nerves. I can imagine working with or around her in such an office, but might not always like it. Yet add a life outside as indicated that quote with which I began, and it's possible to see not just a saner host society but a saner Amélie/Nothomb as well. Fubuki too, comes across a bit more complexly in the novel where she's a genuinely tragic figure, too old (at an insanely young age) to marry wisely, but this is at the expense of pages of exposition that would have stopped the film cold. When the vice-president has a screaming fit at Fubuki, Amélie sees unconscious sexual tension, an excuse for the fat man to get close to the imposing beauty. An unlikely but apt touch point film might be Neil Labute's 1997 In the Company of Men.An American-born but much older coworker of mine used to tweak us by saying about Japanese visiting the Bay Area, "Hey, they reeeally impress me. They're so regimented! I wish I could be like that!" I don't think he meant it. More likely he was reminding us that those otherworldly visitors were not him. Stupeur et tremblements has the form of a horror flick, or even of Larry David-style embarrassment comedy. To get more out of it, try to imagine for each character, even the obese vice-president, a 24-hour day.