Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (2009)

Very Cool!!!

the audience applauded

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

One of less warmly received movies at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival seems to have gotten into competition more on the basis of the director Isabel Coixet's credentials, than actual quality. More or less openly inspired by "Lost in Translation" this Spanish production garnishes a more ambitious route suggesting inner knowledge on Tokio reality, not using it as a symbolic vessel of detachment, but as a well-treaded path following a recognisable motif of a would-be assassin, who falls in love with her prey.By day a physical labourer on the fish market, by night a contract-killer Ryu (Rinko Kikuchi) is hired out by Japanese CEO Nagara (Takeo Nakahara) to avenge the suicide of his daughter, driven apparently to the brink by a failed love affair (the specific nature of this fall-out is never revealed). The target is Spanish wine-seller David (Sergi López), a slightly overweight love-machine with animal magnetism distraught by the suicide and contemplating the same fate. During research Ryu compulsively happens to chance a short affair with the hapless foreigner, a serious breach of contract...Told with fluid imagery filled less with noise of Tokio, but more of Japanese renditions of Eastern hits, including a pretty awful karaoke attempt at Depeche Mode by the uninspirational Sergi Lopez. At times sensual Coixet entices with nicely shot frames and lingering emotions, but the unfortunate reality is that the fleeting story of "Map of the Sounds of Tokyo" is a muddled collage of beautiful visuals, which make nice eye candy, but a forgettable movie. Nonetheless the invitation to entertain in the less frequented areas of Japanese movies, like the fish market or the automated hotels, does offer gratification, albeit scarcely sufficient to supplement the plot.The slowly drifting story also falls into the pitfall of English language usage, as both Kikuchi and Lopez struggle to sell the part, when forced into unfamiliar language territory, given an off-key performance, which creates an awkward distance and ambivalence to the characters as well as dissolves the mood and focus set out by the carefully constructed layers of imagery focusing the mood.Performance-wise the strongest input is guaranteed by older-timer Nakahara, who given the limited screen-time inputs an unwavering presence, while the opening scene at a sushi restaurant is one of the sole reasons why the picture is actually worth a watch. It essentially also lays out the underlying premise - people come to Japan to input their projections of how the country looks, while Japanese in an attempt to be good hosts adhere to their expectations. Unfortunately Coixet fails to listen to her own advice.

Isabel Coixet is a director I always liked since I saw My Life Without Me (2003)a few years back. Since then I tried to see the rest of her films.This one just like Elegy (2008), seems to be Coixets attempt at becoming a more mainstream director, a bankable director able to do genre films.However, Coixet seems very unfamiliar with genrefilmmaking and this film is very flawed, lacks focus and also brings almost nothing new the thriller genre.Coxiet dramathriller about a Japanese girl who works at the fishmarket and also doubles as an assassin is basically your average story about a lonely assassin doing his/her job without emotion until one day....Coixet tries to fill this tired, cliché ridden subgenre with filmpoetry, beautiful visuals, odd script and different approach but somewhere leaves the viewer with feeling that she knows almost nothing about this subgenre.Experimenting with genres, mixing style and content in order to do something new and still stick to genretraditions is one hard thing to do.Coixet doesn't handle this well, but there are good things to say about Rinko Kikuchis fishmarket girl, Sergi Lópezs wine merchant etc. Coixet has always been good directing actors and once again we get a film full of wonderful performances.Had Coixet seen Le samouraï (1967), Xich lo/Cyclo (1995), Seom/The Isle (2000)etc we would have probably seen a different film altogether, instead of this flawed film.However, see this film regardless of what the critics say, it has very nice performances, visuals etc.And maybe next time Coixet will make a better genrefilm.

What can I say? The movie did not live up to the promise of its opening scene. It's well-shot and nicely lit, with a few postcard-perfect views of Tokyo, but the story makes no sense, the characters are poorly written, and Sergi Lopez is horribly miscast as the male lead. The ending is a formulaic cop-out.The trailer tries to sell the movie as a sex thriller, which it's most decidedly not. It's a tale of two lost souls in a big city who try to find solace in each other, but fail, for various reasons.Rinko Kikuchi performs well as a quiet fish market worker who moonlights as a paid assassin, but her character remains an enigma throughout the movie, which makes it difficult for the audience to connect or empathize with her. She bares her body more than once in fairly explicit sex scenes - and what a nice body it is - one only wishes the director could give us similar insight into her soul.Sergi Lopez does his usual macho strut with a hint of menace which might have worked in a different movie, but feels utterly out of place in an upscale wine merchant from modern-day Tokyo. He is very unconvincing as Rinko's love interest, and is further hindered by his corpulent, scary hairy physique and significant age difference with his co-star. I could not for the life of me believe in chemistry between the two of them.The omnipresent narrator, an older sound engineer who maintains chaste friendship with Rinko's character and gives the movie its title, is the most sympathetic of all, but he is more of a convenient voice-over device than a fully-fleshed character. Other parts are one-dimensional at best.Recommended only for indiscriminate art-house fans, Japan fetishists, and furries.

Well, I went to see this movie yesterday and it was not what I was expecting. Does that means it was worse than I imagined? At all, it just means it was different.Coixet portrays a different perspective of Tokyo where the city becomes just an excuse to show the loneliness of its two protagonists, who are literally lost in a decaying world and don't know how to get out of it. Ryu, the Japanese girl, is an assassin who gets paid for its job, and David is an Spanish living in Tokyo, who has lost his wife recently and feels his life has nothing but emptiness. Both found themselves alone and feel they need each other, but things are not easy and there are some scars that will never be healed.This is NOT "Lost in Translation" and this is NOT about Tokyo but about human feelings. If you want to see a more realistic movie about Japanese culture and you think you might like this movie because you're a fan of everything related to it, you might be very disappointed. If you go there with no expectations and you just want to get immersed by its story, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.That being said, it contains very explicit sex scenes, so be careful little children. I don't think it's a movie any kid would like to see or appreciate, anyways.