Japanese Story

A lovely, strapping, bull-dykish-but-hetero lass (Collette) strokes her boyish Japanese lover (Tsunashima) in a motel room before stripping off, donning his trousers and mounting him. Wow, you think, anyone doing a graduate film thesis on transgressive female sexuality or the feminisation of oriental males is going to be seriously aroused by this scene. And that’s very much the way of Japanese Story. There’s clearly someone at the helm (a girl – always brill to see) concerned (perhaps consumed) by such weighty matters and absolutely determined to fashion some sensual arthouse fare mediated through a distinctly feminine gaze. Which is an incredibly affected way of saying that the film offers a scene of softcore filth for chicks.
Not that I’m complaining. Besides, on these terms director Sue Brooks succeeds admirably. Japanese Story is (generally) a girlishly well-observed and sensual relationship movie that paints its initially combative central couple with the same Bouvier-ish leisured elegance that made last year’s Lantana such a critical wow.
When fate and a geological expedition conspire to make Collette's character a guide for a visiting Japanese businessman, the chemistry lacks promise. Her butch self-reliance is very much the yang to Tsunashima’s dainty Asian yin, and their mutual irritation is heightened by a truck breakdown in the remote western outback. “There’s nothin’ to stick the winch onto,” growls Collette in a manner that’s less Ai No Corrida, more “I know how to dispose of a body out here, mate.”
By this time, fans of red-earthed antipodean aesthetics will undoubtedly have been conquered by the Walkabout-landscape, while the rest of us will find pleasure in the way our central pair infuriate then warm to one another over car repairs and cultural exchanges.
He explains the concept of losing face. She teaches him some shocking Aussie vowels and starts to mother him unbearably. Indeed, during one particularly disturbing and condescending maternal outpouring she cuts her lover’s dinner into easily digestible pieces and I found myself dread-stricken lest she chew and regurgitate as a scary-love encore.
But if Japanese Story overplays the Broken Blossoms-helpless oriental bloke versus butch Oz-zilla girl stuff – and it does – the affair is drawn intriguingly and tenderly. In fact, the movie is going swimmingly well until a sudden, shocking plot twist. Not a problem in itself, you see; I like surprises as much as the next person, but the unexpected turn sends the film into freefall. Suffice it to say that tragedy strikes leading to a final act so woefully uneventful and malingering that I half expected a bizarre Weekend At Bernie’s punchline.
Still, though Japanese Story topples like a paper house at the denoument, it remains a fine-looking, acutely performed film that is warmly recommended provided you have the comfort of a good book and night-goggles for the final half hour.

105 mins. cert IFI members. Opens June 4