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Japanese Story
Samuel Goldwyn Films


5.7

based on 32 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 12 votes
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Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for some sexuality and language

Starring Toni Collette, Gotaro Tsunashima, Matthew Dyktynski, Lynette Curran, Yumiko Tanaka, Kate Atkinson, John Howard, and Bill Young

A cross-cultural journey, an emotional drama and a haunting love story between an ambitious geologist and a Japanese businessman. (Samuel Goldwyn Films)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Foreign
WRITTEN BY:	Alison Tilson
DIRECTED BY:	Sue Brooks
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: May 11, 2004 Video: May 11, 2004 Theatrical: December 31, 2003
RUNNING TIME:	100 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Australia

Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress (Collette), Best Cinematography and Best Composer, 2003 Australian Film Critics Circle Awards; Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress (Collette), Best Original Screenplay, Best Score, Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Cinematography and Best Editing, 2003 Australian Film Institute Awards

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The glory of Japanese Story is that even after a daringly abrupt plot turn, the cast maintains its empathy and lucidity without interruption.

Variety David Stratton

Develops into a powerfully emotional experience thanks to a career-best performance by Toni Collette.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Tsunashima gives a deft performance in a role that starts out as caricature but becomes full-bodied. Collette commands the screen virtually the entire time.

Time Richard Schickel

Japanese Story is a simple, austerely told tale. But there is something memorable, even haunting, about it.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A movie with surprises, some of which you should discover for yourself. But its main surprises may be the power of Collette's performance and the beautifully controlled mood and atmosphere Brooks creates.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Plays with cultural stereotypes, and upends them as well. The picture starts as one thing and turns, dramatically, movingly, into something else.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Gradually the full arc of Toni Collette's performance reveals itself, and we see that the end was there even in the beginning. This is that rare sort of film that is not about what happens, but about what happens then.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Looks at isolation and the fragility of human relationships. It's a poignant, unsettling motion picture that will baffle those who have become used to Hollywood's compact, tidy endings.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Collette proves herself worthy of carrying a movie with a performance that runs the gamut of human emotion without striking one false note.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

This is an origami story, really, about what a construction of chance the big world is.

Chicago Reader Staff (Not credited)

The first half involves some dully familiar cross-cultural comedy, as the two grate on each other's nerves. But the descending action veers into unexpected emotional territory, deftly handled by screenwriter Alison Tilson.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

When the credits roll and the mood breaks, Japanese Story finally reveals itself as more dewy-eyed than deep, but as long as the mood holds, it holds fast.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

The quiet and intimacy of what is essentially a two-character piece are well juxtaposed by Brooks against the vast desert expanses of her home country, captured in sumptuous wide-screen cinematography by the great Ian Baker.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

Collette is fearless in reaching deeply into her emotions, and her expressiveness as an actress comes across as completely natural because it so clearly comes from within.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Like a haiku, it is not what is said, but what is unsaid, that leaves the most lasting echoes.

Empire Angie Errigo

Offbeat and downbeat, it’s a film full of thoughtful stillness, powerful moods, reflective internal struggles and shattering, lonely self-realisation, suggesting more critical kudos than commercial impact.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

This is not a conventional love story but a philosophical one.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

For all its cross-cultural hijinks, Japanese Story winds up as a tale about the fragility of human beings and the lasting strength of the bonds we form during times of crisis.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

Brooks has made a movie that is about separation from convenience and having to deal one-on-one with a stranger in a strange land. The result is a profound and moving movie.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The story in Japanese Story grabs you precisely because it's so wonderfully hard to define.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Brooks endows Japanese Story with a fair measure of suspense, pathos, and romance, despite the challenge of conjuring these qualities from only two main characters and not much else to look at in many scenes but sand, sand, sand.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Japanese Story could have been a two-character play staged in front of a desert mural. It wouldn't have been as pretty, but it's that tight.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Tsunashima is superb, and a never-better Collette (The Sixth Sense, About a Boy, The Hours) has a radiant intensity that hits you right in the heart. She burns this movie into your memory.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

This offbeat take on "The African Queen" stumbles on a couple of awkward transitions, but generally succeeds on the merits of Collette's unerring ability to carry the viewer along her constantly changing emotional landscape.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Toni Collette's extraordinary performance, Alison Tilson's sensitive script and Ian Baker's sensational cinematography add up to a surprising film.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Ultimately too thin for its length and too dependent on easy assumptions about its characters. But it does demonstrate that Ms. Collette is more than able to carry a movie, and it leaves you hoping she will soon have another chance to do it.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Best taken as a dazzling showcase for Collette, an actress who fits none of Hollywood's ideas of glamour or artistry, yet who grows like a beautiful outback weed with each new role she takes.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It's a grab bag of small delights -- and that includes a workmanlike performance by Toni Collette -- but it never quite amounts to a full load.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Totally convincing in a physically demanding role, Collette carries the movie on her shoulders -- and that weight is what it's all about.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

To mildly respect Japanese Story is easy. To enjoy it would require an act of will.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

Snoozy and unconvincing.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

Pretentious yet devoid of poetry, left-of-center yet artless, this well-intentioned trudge does not exist to be enjoyed or appreciated so much as to be coddled and patronized as one would a retarded child.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.7 (out of 10) based on 12 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Margo W. gave it a3:
Toni Collette is superb, but the film isn't. I think the film would have been better if the two leads had remained friends (a too short and unlikely jump from antagonism to romance), and if the swerve at the end hadn't occurred.

John P. gave it a10:
Undoubtedly one of the most intelligent and sensitive explorations in cultural differences, Japanese Story gently but accurately portrays how two almost opposite persons can share their deepest emotions whether in love or death. An astute glimpse into the nature of love, commitment and death. See it more than once and take away something new and wonderful. Breathtaking, stunning and heartful. A hidden gem!

Craig S gave it a9:
Slow paced, and deliberately so. This film is beautiful yet unrelentingly sad. I must be getting soppy in my old age, because it left me blubbering like an infant. Not bad for a 30 year old cynic.

Ty S. gave it a 4:
I really wanted to enjoy this movie but it left me empty . I love anything in the Australian desert as it is an amazing part of the world but this movie lost me once the two started to get intimate. It jumped far too many gaps in too short a time and then that scene at the waterhole ?? What the ?? Not my kind of movie I guess as it was just too boring and far fetched. Ty.

Scazz A. gave it a 9:
What a powerful story, simply told in the enigmatic Australian Desert.

Stephen S. gave it a 6:
Since PJ Hogans Aussie hit Muriels Wedding gave her a lift, Toni Collette has gone from strength to strength, scoring good roles with prominent American directors. Shes the only name actor that Sue Brooks, also an Australian, uses here. As a true local, not seeking to curry favour in the international market, Brooks gets the laconic Australian speech and manner right. Her story is that of a hard-bitten female geologist who falls for the uptight Japanese shes squiring around the northwest of Australia. In Australian movies, going to the outback is often an indication that the director lacks ideas. While the outback cinematography is a great strength of Japanese Story, it is also true that the desert is used as a character in its own right to paper over limitations in the story. Brooks confident, but portentous, directorial style is a little rich for the one-trick script. Which doesnt do enough to establish Collette as a professional geologist, or to convince us of her sudden shift from contempt for her companion to concupiscence. Which doesnt really nail the presumed point of the movie that the honorable Japanese is undergoing considerable personal growth while hanging out in the Kimberleys. Patriotic Australian critics salivated over this one, but a more objective summary for the American audience would be tolerable for an Australian film. But were grateful that Brooks did not use the ubiquitous Nicole Kidman as the Aussie geologist.

TC-fan gave it an 8:
Toni Collette gives an incredibly moving performance in this film - maybe her best, which is saying something.

Japanese Story Samuel Goldwyn Films

Japanese Story
Samuel Goldwyn Films