Sylvie Testud and Kaori Tsuji in Fear and Trembling: "Bow--Bow--To his daughter-in-law elect!"
Published March 16, 2005
Amélie's fascination with Fubuki is also sexually ambiguous, and it's unclear whether the character is supposed to be uncommitted to an identity and so not fully aware of what she's giving off or whether it's the moviemakers who are unaware (though Fubuki does mention it in passing once). And the movie also treasures Amélie's worminess a bit much, as if the inability to take care of herself were just what made her such a poetic soul. As irony, then Fear and Trembling isn't itself bracingly impersonal about Amélie's story as the Brazilian Suzana Amaral's brilliant Hour of the Star is about the fate of its nobody protagonist. At the same time it is preferable to the thoughtless jokiness about Japan in Lost in Translation, that mopey-narcissistic tourist's movie. Fear and Trembling likewise features an outsider's sense of alienation in Tokyo, but the heroine has made much more of an effort to fit in, and her "specialness" itself contributes to the comedy. There's none of the sigh-heaving preciosity of Lost in Translation (click here for my review).
Fear and Trembling is a quick, intelligent trifle that plays out the hyperbolic possibilities in the modern clash of cultures. That clash pushes the idealistic fool of a heroine to the bottom of Japanese corporate culture and out, all the way back to Belgium where she puts her experiences in a book and gets the kind of career she's suited for. In other words, in Tokyo Amélie gets a glass of cold water in the face and both wakes up and goes on dreaming. The unforced doubleness of Fear and Trembling makes it an unusual and easily recommendable little entertainment.
You can find this review and a lot besides at The Kitchen Cabinet.
Alan Dale is the author of What We Do Best: American Movie Comedies of the 1990s and Comedy Is a Man in Trouble: Slapstick in American Movies.
- Sylvie Testud and Kaori Tsuji in Fear and Trembling: "Bow--Bow--To his daughter-in-law elect!"
- Published: March 16, 2005
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- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Art House, Video: Comedy, Video: Foreign Language
- Writer: Alan Dale
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Hey Caoimhin,
Thanks for writing. I'm glad the movie showed on HBO. Clearly I think a lot of people would find it "entertaining." Considering what gets distributed, "a little entertainment" is pretty high praise. I didn't intend that to be patronizing but to serve as a technique for managing readers' expectations. A strange, unhyped movie you yourself refer to as delicate is not going to benefit from grandiose praise.
I also disagree that the movie provides "an unposed snapshot of Japanese life." Movies don't get a lot more posed than Fear and Trembling. That's what makes it funny. It's a comic sketchbook about cultural dissonance in the face of the heroine's outlandish desire for harmony. That's art enough.
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I have just seen this movie on HBO. I had never heard of it and was wondering what the critical reaction had been when it was released. I think Alan Dale has got it absolutely spot on although I think it merits more than being dubbed "a little entertainment"
The movie accomplishes with some delicacy the extraordinarily difficult task of providing the audience with an unposed snapshot of Japanese life.At the same time we have, in the narrator and protagonist, an unsentimental view of a European girl with artistic pretensions who could be one of the millions of backpackers swarming the planet while scribbling their narcissistic and hence banal observations in their precious journals.
What makes this movie more than a mere entertainment is its underlying theme: Self importance. The Japanese take on this can seem more direct and uncompromising .The European one is muddied by ideological contradictions centered on our self obsession. We Westerners see the value of humilty and forbearance but we can't stop smirking at ourselves in the mirror. Amelie publishes her book, and so can continue to exult in the glory of her private vision. Her self imposed suffering was thus all perhaps in vain.
Then again, perhaps not. The snapshots of our self absorbed Westerner and our rulebound Japanese are unsparing to either. This is what makes this movie a work of art.
I would be fascinated to know of the Japanese reaction.