Across the Great Divide

Worlds apart: Gotaro Tsunashima and Toni Collette look not too much in love.

A cross-cultural romance reveals as many gaps as it bridges.

by Cindy Fuchs

Sandy Edwards (the remarkable Toni Collette) is a geologist who spends most of her time poring over charts and rocks in Australia's Pilbara Desert. For the most part, she's settled into a routine sort of frustration. She's annoyed at her death-preoccupied mother, resists dating the dull guys her mom likes and gives precious little thought to her nightly meal (baked beans in a can). Focused if not exactly ambitious, she complains of extra assignments but finds herself unable to, as a friend suggests, "just say no."

And so, as Japanese Story begins, Sandy takes on yet another project, namely, looking after a wealthy Japanese investor, Hiromitsu (Gotaro Tsunashima). Their first meeting goes badly: She arrives late to the airport, he reads her chattering skeptically, assuming she's a driver who will carry his luggage. Later that first evening, Hiro drinks too much and performs an awful karaoke version of "Danny Boy," which her co-workers appreciate as much as she detests it. In this moment, for Sandy, Hiro reveals the worst of both male worlds, as stereotypically formal as any movie-conjured Japanese, as crass as any Westerner. Rolling her eyes, she asserts, "He's a real jerk, boring as bloody cat shit."

While Sandy's perspective is plain enough, Hiro's remains more obscure, a function of his "otherness," but also of the movie's close attention to her lack of insight, context or empathy. During a five-hour drive out to the company mine, she sighs, grimaces, smokes cigarettes. In the passenger seat, Hiro speaks into his cell phone in subtitled Japanese: "She's very loud and aggressive," and, moreover, "she's got a big bum." Not so Hiro, whom Sandy observes swimming. Pretending to read a magazine, she surreptitiously studies up on Japanese (she knows nothing of the language or the culture), while sneaking looks at Hiro's slim legs and taut belly, captured in tight frames that recall the objectification typical of boys watching girls on Baywatch.

Such immersion in Sandy's evolving perceptions shifts Sue Brooks' film away from what would seem its generic romance outline (opposites will attract), and into other territory. On the most literal level, this shift begins with the couple's journey into the outback ("There is nothing," Hiro observes of a striking vista. "It scares me"). As Sandy becomes increasingly impatient with Hiro's stiffness, he's uncomfortable revealing any weakness. When their vehicle gets bogged down in mud, they spend a night out in the desert (which Hiro mispronounces as "dessert"), very cold and very grumpy with each other. Their unexpectedly successful escape the next morning leads to instant bonding, giddily singing "On the Road Again" like they're old buddies.

Their motel-room sex scene, at once predictable and delicate, again focuses on Sandy's experience. She strokes her lover's slender torso, the camera close on her hand, then cutting to her contented face. She walks across the room to remove her clothes for his observation, pausing before she slips on his trousers, which fit her well. She straddles Hiro on the bed, still in his pants, moving slowly, with the camera slowly creeping up over the back of his head to show her face. Simultaneously looming and warm, Sandy at last finds herself in her openness to someone wholly other from herself. Even when she learns that Hiro is married (spotting a family photo in his wallet), Sandy's strangely reluctant to judge, and instead appreciates their brief, bracing moments together.

For a couple of days, they explore the desert, themselves and each other, rarely running into another person. When they take a boat across a lake, the old-timer boatman tactlessly jokes about Australian-Japanese history. "In the war, we thought you blokes were coming after us. We had stuff stashed away up in the hills, evacuation plans. É Now you blokes own the place." The sentiment gets Sandy's attention, her earlier resentment of Hiro now recontextualized. "Funny thing, life, isn't it?" asks the old man. She smiles warmly at her Japanese lover, and he accepts her tacit apology. "Here in the dessert," he says, "you have showed me something beautiful. Thank you."

Their alternately sober and giddy efforts to communicate across different languages and cultures complicates what might seem a simple, sentimental and sensual relationship. And so, the film's drastic change-up in mood, brought on by a truly unexpected plot turn, also connects with its thematic interests -- in fragmented experience, isolation and identity, as these are affected by Sandy and Hiro's collision. Ultimately, Japanese Story is not very "Japanese." Rather, it's about the damage done by stereotypes and expectations. Sandy's efforts to think beyond her own horizon occasionally fall short, but she comes to understand her limits.

Japanese Story

Directed by Sue Brooks A Samuel Goldwyn Films release Opens Friday at Ritz Bourse

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