Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (2009)

This had all the credentials to be a memorable film experience. It's by a Spanish woman who films in Tokyo attempting to have something revealed about women and the erotic mystery, and she is from the most architecturally musical city of Spain, Barcelona. So you'd expect her to have sensitive insights, to be sensitive to place, and for these to be somehow amalgamated into visual music about the yearnings. Our entry is an inscrutability about women. Why did the ex-girlfriend commit suicide? What lurks behind the silent exterior of the girl who works nights at the fishmarket? A Spanish man has touched both. So she (the filmmaker) puts inscrutable women at the center, one of them dead, the other an idealized cipher, the dark-haired sullen girl from manga who quietly yearns and destroys herself. She creates an affair that amounts to merely sex, fantasy and waiting for a truth that never comes, the man is just not worth her love, and yet ends it with sacrifice. So poetry about falling for a man who has nothing to give back and being cut deeply when he leaves, a complete tragedy of misspent emotion. It has some evocative images, it seems you can point a camera anywhere in Tokyo and capture a mood, but it's all stickied to the film like polaroids on a photoalbum, a superficial loneliness to carry back home from the visit; the noodle bar with steam rising from pots, the empty karaoke bar, neon streets and fissures. So much opportunity missed to mingle with things.So the film here in the same swoop fails to intimately know Japan, fails to know more than heartbreak, and fails to capture a fundamental mystery about touch. It may be that this woman has just not known love or was deeply hurt when she tried and still thinks it was her fault.

Well, what can I say? I am Spanish and I am a little familiarized with Japan and Japanese culture, my girlfriend is a Japanese girl living in Tokyo and I have visited the city. In my humble opinion, the portrait of Tokyo in this movie could be one of its limited virtues because at least is trying to show a different point of view focused not only on the typical tourist pictures but also on some not so glamorous places as small restaurants of ramen, a cemetery or a market for selling fish. Soundtrack is interesting and well chosen too, and nothing to complain about photography of the French Jean-Claude Larrieu. About Isabel Coixet, her work as a director is competent and even it has a "touch" more Japanese than Spanish (more concentrated on the silences or natural sounds than the dialogs or artificial noises, for example).Until here the positive. Now the not so positive, always in my opinion. First, the story. A professional killer falling in love with his (her) victim and breaking his (her) own rules with bad consequences. How many times we have watched this kind of story in a movie? Too many times, I think. Second (and specially), the main actor. Sergi López. He is a respected actor here in Spain, but sorry, to choose him as the man able to light some fire in the cold heart of Ryu is one of the biggest mistakes I have seen in a casting for a movie. Sergi López, let's be honest, is not tall, not sophisticated, too old for Ryu and also scandalously fat for this kind of character. He is not charming, his face is the face of a farmer or a boxer and his voice is annoying in its vulgarity.Again, sorry Sergi López, but nobody can believe that a very young Japanese girl can kill herself because of you, and also another young girl can fall in love with you until the extreme to risk her own life. Everything in only one month. Wow, are you some kind of Spanish chubby Bond with a special skill for melting Japanese girls? Isabel Coixet is a woman, and it's supposed a clever one. Does she believe the script? I don't believe it! And sorry sorry, even I can't believe López managing a wine shop for gourmet clients in Tokyo.

Simply beautiful. Painstakingly pictured. Full of layers of imagery and sound. The visions and sounds themselves are heart stopping. The strong female lead Ryu, played by Rinko Kikuchi, is stunning and heartbreaking. People overlook how rare it is to have a strong unusual female lead like this in any movie. The drama unfolds delicately, each scene a piece of art that draws you into its suspense and passion. The story is sad but not contrived; the writing is poetry. Writer and director Isabel Coixet's unique artistic view gives fresh color to each scene. Map of the Sounds of Tokyo isn't a cliché about different cultures or living abroad, it is simply a good story filmed like a movie should be.

I don't particularly like Isabel Coixet's movies, but I can accept that her pulse fits well when screen playing dramatic, intimate novels. However, if you let her free to compose her own script, it's a disaster. This movie is a disaster. It takes borrowed scenes from Wim Wenders, Taylor Hackford (only An Officer and a Gentleman's final scene can compete with this movie's final scene) and Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation is haunting this movie every second). The dialogs make no sense, the characters make no sense and what's even worse - her apparent goal of paying an homage to Tokyo is completely frustrated: this movie could be set in any other city, you don't even notice the influence of Tokyo.Don't waste your time, as I wasted mine.