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Japanese Story
EMAILPRINTSamuel Goldwyn Films
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 32 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 12 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Foreign
Written by: Alison Tilson
Directed by: Sue Brooks
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 31, 2003
DVD: May 11, 2004
Running Time: 100 minutes, Color
Origin: Australia
Summary
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)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
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...
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.
Read Full Review >Variety David Stratton
Develops into a powerfully emotional experience thanks to a career-best performance by Toni Collette.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Schickel
Japanese Story is a simple, austerely told tale. But there is something memorable, even haunting, about it.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
This is an origami story, really, about what a construction of chance the big world is.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
Like a haiku, it is not what is said, but what is unsaid, that leaves the most lasting echoes.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman
This is not a conventional love story but a philosophical one.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
The story in Japanese Story grabs you precisely because it's so wonderfully hard to define.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
To mildly respect Japanese Story is easy. To enjoy it would require an act of will.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
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.
