Subtle, Reflective, and a Perfect Setting

Rating: Null/10 (19 September 2003)

It is rare to come across a film that touches you so much in a quiet, unforced way while also managing not to be pretentious in a high-art kind of way. This movie is simply perfect, and should be enjoyed by anyone who has experienced the depths of life and human relationships. I might also add, as a Japanese person who has grown up in both Japan and the U.S., that this film is the most realistic depiction of mainstream Japan I have ever seen in any Westerner-made film. Some people might take issues with the seeming "ridiculing" of the culture and people, but personally, I did not find anything offensive (put down or exoticized), and doubt that anyone who could paint such an accurate picture had any condescending, ethnocentric intentions behind it. The fact is, much of the culture, landscapes, and human minds in Japanese cities have been and are continuing to be warped due to the cold and shallow excesses of capitalism, westernization, and technology, and much like in any other overpopulated and overmodernized city in the world, meaningless material distractions fill the voids of hearts and stupify the minds of people. (Not that that is the case for every single location and person in Japan, and if anyone assumed so, that is the fault of the viewer, not the director.) And yet, the culture of Japan is still remarkably different from those of other modernized countries. As such, Japan was a perfect background for the quietly developing relationship between two isolated characters surrounded by overwhelming superficialities and unfamiliarities. I truly applaud Sophia Coppola for this wonderful movie!