Tokyo Biyori

[Frances Loden]

Mark, three of your points are legitimate and the fourth is out of line.

Like I said before, it's hard to judge a film on its own merits when it is
so infused with the spirit of the photographer who inspired it and wrote
the book based on it.  I think Araki's reputation as "skin-trade/demimonde
insider" and "dead wife worshiper" are, respectively, toned down and
punched up to mollify potential detractors.  The result is a character,
Shimazu, who is so nothing special that I don't know why a film should
revolve around him.  So he suffers because his wife displays odd behavior.
Big deal!  The more interesting film might have been about a flaming
narcissist or love hotel photographer, not a "pussycat."

If Yoko is such a free spirit, how come we never find out what she was
doing during those 3 days she disappeared?  I don't think it really matters
at all in the film.  Her absence simply caused her husband a lot of pain.
There was one potentially revealing moment when Shimazu finally gets around
to asking her what the ENT doctor's diagnosis was when she visited her so
very many scenes ago.  (Shimazu had already visited the ENT himself and
found out, but didn't tell her he knew.)  Shimazu remarks, "We get along so
well, yet we are always hiding things from each other.  Why is that?
Because we value each other so much?"  Curious rationalization for lack of
communication, but let it go--perhaps the more important moment occurs
immediately afterwards, when Shimazu asks Yoko, "Are you enjoying life with
me?"  And she can't answer, she says, because she'd start crying.  That was
a good moment in the film, I thought--ambivalent, communicative, honest,
mature, subtle.  If only the rest of the film were like that.

As for your claim that the film has a sense of humor, well . . . I'm glad
you saw something to compensate for the rest of it.

>4) It's hard to trust a critic who misses or misinterprets basic facts
>about a film she is lambasting. It indicates (1) she wasn't paying
>attention or (2) her Japanese isn't up to snuff. Which is it Frances?

That's a cheap shot, Mark.  It was a mistake, and I owned up to it--but I
don't think it's a reflection on my language comprehension.  My Japanese is
pretty good, but I'm bound to miss a detail or two in any film during which
I'm scribbling notes and trying to eat a crab-potato salad with a comb at
the same time.

I don't want to be branded as consistently negative against Japanese
cinema, because I'm not.  But it is useful to read the critical comments by
non-Japanese reviewers of some of the more recently lauded films in the
Oct. 15th issue of _Brutus_.


Frako Loden
Tokyo, Japan
(03) 3247-5332
Keitai: 010-04-97072