A profound serenity

An intense, beautiful Australian film, Japanese Story stars Toni Collette as Sandy, a geologist living in the metropolis with her eccentric mother.

Sandy is harried, city-wise, full of abrasive energy; when she gets in from work she cooks beans, makes toast, listens to her messages, gets changed, rips up bits of lettuce and looks anxiously out of windows - all at the same time. This girl is split into so many pieces that it's hard to get a handle on her character: sometimes you like her, sometimes you don't.

One day, her business partner sends her on a field trip to the remote Pilbara desert with a Japanese entrepreneur who might invest in their software company. Hiromitsu (Gotaro Tsunashima) is unbelievably good-looking - dainty, precise, like something carved from shell - but he finds Sandy frightening. In fact they are both alarming. They seem to relish the language barrier between them as they roar down dirt tracks in their rented 4x4, not even trying to communicate.

The story settles on the week that this strange pair spend together in the outback, during which they get lost, start talking and become lovers. For a while, Sue Brooks's film simply rolls with the tensions of a new relationship - the two are so nervous and anticipatory around each other, at moments they make us as jumpy as they are.

In their first love scene, Sandy gets undressed then puts on Hiromitsu's suit trousers (black, pressed, bespoke) before getting into bed, as though declaring a need to feel so close to him as to almost be him. These kind of mood sequences - and Japanese Story is full of them - are so personal and intimate that they have the effect of opening the film right up, making it evocative of our most messy and mysterious affairs.

Traditionally, there is a buoyancy to Australian cinema that makes it particularly pleasing; often you find yourself laughing before you've even settled down in your seat. The buoyancy in this film is matched by its strange and profound serenity.

Japanese Story
Cert: 15