Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (2009) – New Cinema Wallpaper of the Day – Rinko Kikuchi & Sergi Lopez

blake — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:58:23 +0000

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New Cinema Wallpaper of the Day
Tuesday, July 14, 2009

18 images and 2 posters for Isabel Coixet’s exquisite hit-woman love fairy tale Map of the Sounds of Tokyo.

This was the last film I saw at Cannes this year and I really didn’t think I was going to be able to. I stood in the rush line hoping to get into its world premiere as everyone I knew still in town didn’t have any tickets and the online points system had it all booked out. As luck would have it some kind soul came over and gave me a ticket into it and not only that it was for the orchestra section of the Grand Theatre Lumiere. All my other excursions in the Lumiere had been up in its balcony section. With the orchestra section you get to walk the full red carpet instead of just part of it. On the first part you can even do whatever pose you like regardless of your claim to fame or lack thereof.

With ticket in hand I slowly worked my way down the red carpet and up its famed stairs. Immediately inside I realized I was one of the first to enter and the usher mentioned something with the nod of their head like they had been expecting me and whisked me into the same row the filmmakers and cast would sit on and its closest aisle seat to. I couldn’t believe it… Rinko Kikuchi from Arch Angels (still vividly remember seeing this on the giant screen at Udine Far East Film Festival) and Funky Forest along with Sergi Lopez from Pan’s Labyrinth were about to walk past me. The only other star from one of my all time favorite films, Funky Forest, that I’ve met was Tadanobu Asano (thanks to Colin Geddes).

It was a heightened and unexpected way to end my first ever trip to the Cannes Film Festival. I really do put the Grand Theatre Lumiere movie going experience as the height of film festival magic. It’s not only watching a movie but in a way everyone there is also there to celebrate cinema itself. When a film really works and captures the heart and imagination of the 2,000+ audience you really can feel it, especially afterwards with incredibly energetic applause and cheers.

I have no idea if I can be seen in any video footage from this event but it was one magical nights and thank God Rinko Kikuchi didn’t crash down the red carpet stairs after she got all tangled up in her dress. And for those wondering she is far more lovely in person and certainly a true beauty and princess of the silver screen.

There was a fair amount of controversy surrounding this film involving its steamy moments and while there are some rather sordid happenings in it, most of it is offscreen leaving you imagination to fill in the blanks. The way both Rinko Kikuchi and Sergi Lopez for me was most jarring for the naturalistic approach to it. Both were shot as natural every day people instead of as actors that looked like they had just stepped out of an 8,000 hour session at a local spa. It’s a very jazzy film with spacial prose of soul searching and longing. It may not make the mark as the most romantic film of 2009 but it easily will be its most lust filled poem. This is a film that proves that the soft notes and lost moments wherever they take place in this world we breath can be realized on film rather vividly however abstract. However quirky and unconventionally alienating this film might be to some there is something here resonating with a distinct voice, I can’t simply put away, something still nudging me about it. Many out there won’t give a damn what the film is about or how it tells its story and simply be there to see its hot scandalous love scenes between Rinko and Sergi. Moments not for the faint or easily offended movie goer!

It’s an uneven ride that never reaches its destination but when it does work, it does so wonderfully and void of the usual pretense and artificial trappings. Parts of it go halfway and don’t fully seem to ever fully commit and it has a ridiculous overly conventional ending you wish it didn’t have but when it all its diverse moving parts and elements do gel it offers a glimpse and promise of one hell of a filmmaking talent to keep track of. There are wisps of fumes here of a fire I want to see more of surrounding all this artful universe and interlocking creativity.

A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR

Films, like tunes or poems, spring from strange encounters, from odd associations that can be completely incongruent but full of magic. In the case of Map of the Sounds of Tokyo, I “saw” the story (I don’t want to sound like some kind of visionary, but this is how I felt it happen) at Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. I suppose the smells of fresh tuna, seaweed and oysters, the shouting of the auctioneers, the scraping and shuffling of thousands of fish boxes dragged across the market floor and the peculiar effects of the fluorescent lighting at four o’clock in the morning had a great deal to do with it. Or perhaps it was the miso soup and eel makis I had for breakfast that did it. Or the stony face of the girl neatly hosing the floor who was so adamant in her refusal to let me photograph her, showing a determination that is unusual for Japan.

However, I remember that on my way back to the hotel on the crowded underground, sleepy after having got up at three in the morning to see the fish being auctioned, that girl was still on my mind and I couldn’t help wondering why she was so emphatic in her refusal. I thought of her rubber boots among the melted ice and the blood of the freshly butchered tuna fish. When I closed my eyes and heard the child-like female voice announcing the next stop, Shinjuku, I knew I would tell this story of a woman – a hard, solitary, mysterious, wounded woman – who leads a double life: a fish market worker who cleans, hauls crates and occasionally carries out jobs as a hit-woman. And the story of a man, whose obsession are sounds, and who is silently in love with that woman, even though he knows that the very most he can expect from her is the sound of her breath, the sound of her heels down an empty alley and her conversations during her meetings with a man, of Spanish origin, towards whom she experiences an attraction that endangers the life she has led up until then as a loner.

To this initial idea, my “vision” or whatever you want to call it, I added the story of a man who is unable to cope with the loss of his daughter, and is on a blind search for revenge that eventually leads to a tragic end.

This is how Map of the Sounds of Tokyo was born.

I was also influenced by the fascination I feel for contemporary Japanese culture and the atmosphere I find in the novels of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto as well as by my unconcealed addiction to wasabi and the almost tangible vibrations emanating from Tokyo during the night: a mixture of expectation, mystery, darkness and tenderness that leaves an indelible mark.

I see the sound tracks to my films as a further character, like the lighting, the scenery, the movement of the camera or the actors’ performance. Map of the Sounds of Tokyo doesn’t have a conventional sound track. Instead, I have put together a collection of songs that accompany the characters in their passion, solitude, joyfulness, melancholy or suffering.

It is a thoroughly eclectic sound track, with songs by Misora Hibari (the traditional Japanese song Genka), Max Richter, the Dutch duo “Kraak & Smaak” or the beautiful “One dove” from Antony & the Johnsons’ latest release.

Isabel Coixet

Image Source:
Official stills and posters that were used in the original international release of the film.

Related Links:
::: IMDb Profile

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Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (2009) – New Cinema Wallpaper of the Day – Rinko Kikuchi & Sergi Lopez