Map of the Sounds of Tokyo Japanese movie
Cast and Crew
Sales: Imagina International SalesMediapro, Versatil Cinema
Cast: Rinko Kikuchi, Sergi Lopez, Min Tanaka, Takeo Nakahara
Director-Screenwriter: Isabel Coixet
Producer: Jaume Roures
Executive producer: Javier Mendes
Director of photography: Jean Claude Larrieu
Production designer: Ryo Sugimoto
Costume designer: Tony Crosbie
Editor: Irene Blecua
No rating, 106 minutes
Reviews Overviews
Pretty to look at but largely vacuous, Spanish helmer Isabel Coixet’s romantic drama "Map of the Sounds of Tokyo" plays like a perfume ad without a product. The Tokyo-set yarn about a Japanese hit-femme who falls for a Spanish man she’s supposed to whack reps a vague cross between "Nikita" and "Last Tango in Paris," but without the former’s kinetic action or the latter’s resonance. Admittedly, "Tokyo’s" softcore sex scenes smoke, which might just help pic map out niche distribution in some territories, but critical support will be thin on the ground, judging by the boos that greeted the Cannes press showing."Map of the Sounds of Tokyo" delivers a major disappointment after Coixet’s underrated Philip Roth adaptation "Elegy," which seemed to herald the arrival of a new, tougher-minded vigor in her direction. Instead, the latest pic, this time written entirely by the helmer herself, sees Coixet returning to the excessively precious, cod-melancholy tone that marred her earlier pic "The Secret Life of Words."Critical goodwill extended toward the helmer for her patchy if effective breakout arthouse drama "My Life Without Me" won’t be so forthcoming this time round.The story here is told via ponderous, would-be poetic narration in Japanese by an unnamed sound recordist (Min Tanaka), who explains how he has a chaste relationship with a mysterious woman named Ryu (stunning Rinko Kikuchi from "Babel"). Ryu does menial but cinematically picturesque work in Tokyo’s fish market, so, she explains later, she doesn’t have to think.The fact that she has a big, stylishly furnished if minimalist apartment that a fish-market-worker’s salary could never afford, always wears slinky black clothes, and in her free time cleans graves and looks sad all adds up to the revelation that she’s a hitwoman. Ryu’s latest assignment is to kill Spanish wine-shop owner David (Sergi Lopez, "Pan’s Labyrinth") on the behalf of a businessman (Takeo Nakahara) whose daughter Midori supposedly committed suicide over David .Instead of just killing David in a crowded street and running off like a proper assassin would, Ryu packs her piece in a dainty handbag (clothes and accessory porn will rep one selling point for femme auds), goes to meet him in his store and is instantly charmed by fact that he recognizes her as a woman who knows her wine. Before you can say "Tampopo," slurps of ramen lead to a different kind of slurping in a love-hotel room fashioned to look like a Paris subway car. Soon after, Ryu offers to pay the client back his money with interest so she doesn’t have to slay David.It’s all really rather silly, but one thing that can be said in Coixet’s defense is that she knows how to tap into the erotic fantasies of some female viewers. Although Lopez’s alarmingly hirsute chest might put off some, his David is almost the perfect arthouse stud monkey: He has a nice bourgeois job that requires refinement and connoisseurship, but is muy macho and assertive in the bedroom, and loves cunnilingus to boot.If only the film showed the character enjoying lengthy discussions of feelings and demonstrating skill at fixing household appliances, he could be to specialist-film-loving women viewers today what Beatrice Dalle in "Betty Blue" was to arty college boys in the 1980s.Although Lopez and Kikuchi have great chemistry and both have proved their acting chops elsewhere, something’s gone badly awry here so that every time they open their mouths — to talk, instead of snog — they sound stilted and flat. It doesn’t help that neither is speaking their first language, but largely it’s the pretentious of the script that fails them.The movie looks nice, courtesy of Jean Claude Larrieu’s lensing (Coixet herself once again takes a credit as camera operator and this is one job she’s indisputably good at). But as with fellow Cannes 2009 competitor Gaspar Noe’s "Enter the Void" also proves, use of Tokyo’s photogenic, color-saturated locations will only get a film so far if it doesn’t have something interesting to say. Sound design credited to Fabiola Ordoyo is good enough but not quite as intricate or nuanced as one would expect given the prominence of sound in both title and screenplay.An erotic thriller about a Japanese assassin who falls in love with her Spanish target, Isabel Coixet’s "Map of the Sounds of Tokyo" is "Nikita" reincarnated with Tokyo eyes. Glossy cinematography and a Wong Kar Wai wannabe soundtrack conspire to rehash some cliched images of the Japanese metropolis, with little that Chris Marker, Wim Wenders, Jean-Pierre Limosin or Sofia Coppola haven’t done before."Map" will fulfill a certain semi-artsy, mostly European crowd’s taste for upmarket exotica with its suggestive representation of a demure oriental beauty’s sexual flowering under the experienced touch of a hot-blooded Hispanic. With 2007 Oscar-nominee Rinko Kikuchi ("Babel") making a bold impression as the assassin, a Japanese release is also likely, even if the corny dialogue may be lost in translation.What’s a cool chick with movie star mascara doing slicing slabs of tuna in Tokyo’ Tsukiji fish market? An elderly sound recorder (Min Tanaka) is too polite to probe when he befriends taciturn Ryu (Rinko Kikuchi) at the ramen museum. Anyways, he’s only enamored of the slurping sounds she makes when she eats, so he’s content to meet for casual meals and visits to anonymous graves. One learns of her other vocation through a montage of hit jobs reminiscent of John Woo’s "killer" films.Ryu gets an assignment from corporate CEO Nagara (Takeo Nakahara) to take out David (Sergi Lopez) a Spanish wine merchant who dated his daughter Midori. Nagara blames David for her suicide — her dying words scribbled in blood intimating the film’s theme. Ryu approaches her target through wine-tasting, but also gets a taste of his incredibly hairy chest in a love hotel room furnished like a train carriage. Then, she does what is considered a big "no, no" in the business, and the rest is noir history.The potboiler plot (which has almost no action for a film about contract killing) and pseudo-Zen musings on life’s inherent heartache exist only to underscore the steamy softcore sex scenes, which are well shot but interrupted by gag-worthy dialogue like "Sit here, on top, in my face, till you warm up."Kikuchi manages to imbue Ryu’s cool, placid exterior with some vulnerability that makes her more human. Less likeable is Lopez, whose portfolio of villainous roles (organ trafficker in "Dirty Pretty Things", wife-batterer in "Solo Mia" and Fascist torturer in "Pan’s Labyrinth") casts an aggressive air over his image as a romantic lover. And despite his protestations of love for Midori, there is no back story to their relationship to help one make sense of his ensuing affair with Ryu. Even more disturbing is Coixet’s fascination with portraying talented, beautiful women who offer up themselves to validate a conflicted older man (already a subject of her "Elegy.")Given the film’s title, one would expect some dramatic arc or conceptual idea to issue from the sound recorder, or a special treatment of sound or music. Not so. Aside from narrating the film, neither his role nor his recordings of Ryu end up having much bearing on the plot. The sound does not particularly stand out, and the music is a cafe compilation of Latin mood pieces and nostalgic Japanese songs that sometimes borders on kitsch — like the Japanese rendition of "La Vie en rose" heard during a smooch scene.The choice of locations — from a club serving sushi on a nude blonde to traditional diners, from the music mecca of Shimokitazawa to a small shrine nestled against autumn leaves, from pachinko parlors to karaoke cells — merged with glittering helicopter shots of Tokyo’s skyline and night traffic, sticks to the beaten tourist path that underlines the film’s pretentious but shallow style.
