The Japanese Story is an Australian production in which a high-strung, rough, and troubled woman geologist has to chauffer a sad, self-contained, and troubled Japanese businessman around the mining sites of Western Australian. At first, he is overbearing and sexist, and she is sullen and bitchy. But when they get bogged in the dessert and face death, they form a survivor’s bond which grows. If I tell any more, I will give away the ending to the story. This movie has come in for more than its fair share of negative criticism. Critics speaking for ethnic minorities say the Japanese businessman is a stereotype. I don’t know. I assume there are lots of people like him in Japan. He doesn’t have to represent the statistical mean of Japanese businessmen, just as the female character doesn’t have to represent the typical Australian woman. Critics speaking for realism complain that the story is not realistic. Although I found it entirely realistic, it is a movie less about “what happens” than about “what happens then.” Critics speaking for how humans react to tragedies say that the last one-third of the movie is melodramatic. But I think this misses the point of the movie. Modern career professionals are often so busy being busy that they lose touch with themselves and with natural human responses to things. While her business partner wants “the incident” to simply go away so that they can get back to business as usual, she wants to grieve, to make amends, to do the right thing—maybe for the first time in many years. She is naturally a bit melodramatic because, for her, it is not just about the incident but about a major change in the way she lives the rest of her life. Toni Collette as the geologist gives an excellent performance, and she is surrounded by other actors who give excellent performances. The script writer and the director gave the movie the careful attention to detail that you’d expect in a good novel. I found this a moving story.
Jim Bell