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Topic: Fear and Trembling (Stupeur Et Tremblements)

Paul Mayer
Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under!

Posts: 3836
From: Albuquerque, NM
Registered: Feb 2000

posted 05-31-2005 01:38 PM

Regal Village Square 18
Screen #6
Monday 2:15pm showing, $6.50

For anyone that nurtures dreams of someday living and working in Japan, this film presents a comic nightmare version of that dream.

Minor spoilers ahead.

Amelie was born in Japan and lived there until age 5 absorbing both the language and the culture. Subsequently she went home to Belgium but vowed to someday return to the country she loves. Jump ahead to 1990, at the peak of Japan's economic height just before the bubble burst, and now she's a recent college graduate, and has just landed a one-year contract translator position with the prestigious and gigantic import-export firm Yumimoto. Although she has good language skills and knowledge of the culture, she has not been exposed to the intricacies of that culture as manifest in the corporate workplace. She is about to get her trial by fire. And how!

It seems that all of her superiors (her sempai (senior colleague) the statuesque and beautiful Mori-san, her drill sergeant of a bucho (department manager), and her bellowing sumo wrestler of a fukushacho (vice president) take great and psychotic delight in punishing her for her never-ending series of somewhat air-headed mistakes in Japanese office protocol. The harder she tries to fit in or show initiative or resourcefulness the more spectacularly she fails, since these qualities are considered to be inferior western ways of thinking and doing in an office culture where concerns over hierarchy, seniority, and conformity are paramount. We follow Amelie's slide down the corporate ladder from translator, to accountant, to bookkeeper, to OL (Office Lady--maker and server of coffee and tea, master of the photocopier, deliverer of mail, and turner of office calendar pages), to finally cleaner of the mens' and womens' 44th floor toilets.

Her bosses know that an inferior westerner (especially a woman) would be expected to quit such an eastern hell--a superior Japanese (even a woman) is expected to put up with it no matter what. A true Japanese never quits. Ever. Yet Amelie not only survives but thrives by out-Japanese'ing the Japanese, finding Zen-like ways of escaping the horrors of her immediate situation while achieving the state of "being without mind" and thus learning to appreciate and laugh at the absurdity of it all. In the end she's able to turn her superiors' smug sense of eastern superiority against them, subtly forcing them to acknowledge both the honor and sense of victory apparent as she ultimately completes her contract.

Even with all of the caricatures (and these performances are caricatures--no Japanese company, not even during the bubble years, would be quite this mean--to foreign workers at least, though I have seen some Japanese OLs treated like this) the humor here is subtle and the film is very finely crafted. Very enjoyable and an eye-opener for newbie Japanophiles that haven't yet learned to see with eyes unclouded. Run this one for your Japanese friends and watch them squirm a little.

Presented in French and Japanese dialog with English subtitles.

* * * * *

This film was shot in hi-def and screened at the Village 18 in 35mm. This was about the worst print condition I've ever seen for a recent release. Lots of deep emulsion and backing scratches, mountains of dirt, loads of cinch marks, and wide permanent marker slashes across the frames at the reel ends. Even though the film had credits for Dolby Digital and DTS it played in very noisy SR due to all of the dirt and track area damage. You'd think you were watching a last remaining beat up old repertoire print instead of a recent release.

Also have to laugh at the way The 2wenty was presented on this screen. The video projector was zoomed to use the full width of the screen, yet the screen masks (top and bottom) were set for 'scope. So quite a bit of picture ended up in the masks or even in the valances above and below the screen. What was the URL for those new car ads they showed? Gee, guess I'll never know since it was off in the masks somewhere. Then the masks moved (very noisily) out for the 1.85 trailers and feature. Several screens at the Village 18 squeak very loudly like this one when the masks move--you'd think Regal could get around to lubing the hardware once in a while. Not that I watch or listen to The 2wenty. These days I carry an MP3 player everywhere so I just listen to my music until the trailers start.

The feature was shown in typical 'Vegas soft focus. At least the film started in frame as opposed to the 'Vegas standard of racking it in (sort of) on the first green band.

[ 07-21-2005, 05:17 PM: Message edited by: Paul Mayer ]

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