Post by Dino on Dec 12, 2010 7:01:35 GMT -5
My Darling is a Foreigner (ダーリンは外国人／Daarin wa Gaikokujin)
Directed by Kazuaki Ue
Written by Satomi Oshima
Based on the manga by Saori Oguri
This is an interesting movie about the barriers in a cross-cultural relationship, kind of similar in a way to My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Saori Oguri (Mao Inoue) is an aspiring manga artist and begins a relationship with Tony Lazlo (Jonathan Sherr), an American living in Japan. One of the first obstacles in a relationship like this is obviously language -- as Saori's mother explains, Saori did terrible in English in school. Fortunately though, Tony is fluent in Japanese.
The couple begins living together and at her sister's wedding, Saori brings Tony with to finally introduce her to the family. Although her parents are initially shocked, her mother (Shinobu Otake) quickly warms to Tony. Saori's father, however (Jun Kunimura) tells her that he would never consent to a marriage between Saori and Tony.
Saori is understandably hurt by this but she keeps it to herself, not even telling Tony about it. Although the pair plan to travel to America together so Tony can introduce Saori to his family, their relationship becomes strained because of Saori's worry over her father's disapproval as well as her increased focus on starting her manga career.
Japan doesn't have a very large immigrant population, only consisting of around 1-2% of the population. As such, there are a lot of stereotypes about foreigners. The movie does unfortunately exploit some of those stereotypes. It opens with a title card saying, "so your darling is a foreigner. Tell us about something weird he says or does" and then cuts to several real-life intercultural couples with the Japanese woman talking about something "weird" her boyfriend does. It really has no bearing on the movie and just seems to be included for a "let's laugh at the silly foreigners" gag. There are two other instances of these cutaways in the movie and they're just distracting.
Also, some of the things Tony doesn't seem to understand seem very strange. For example, there's one scene where people are jokingly insulting their family members and everyone's laughing. It's obvious it's all in good fun, yet Tony gets offended and asks them how they could say such things. My reaction when I saw this was, "dude, you're American. It's not unheard of."
Despite that, the movie is both funny and touching. Inoue is extremely bubbly and quirky and she's a joy to watch. Sherr's fluent in Japanese and his more grounded portrayal is a nice contrast to Inoue's franticness. And it's always great to see Kunimura, even in a small role. He's one of my favorite Japanese actors. He's probably best-known in the west as the Yakuza gangster who gets his head chopped off by O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill, but he's been in popular Japanese films like Audition and Ichi the Killer.
Whether or not you should see the movie depends on where your tastes lie. The film's not as good in its depiction of cross-culture romance as My Big Fat Greek Wedding was, and it's definitely a film intended for Japanese audiences. It can be sappy in places, but overall it's a fun movie.
Directed by Kazuaki Ue
Written by Satomi Oshima
Based on the manga by Saori Oguri
This is an interesting movie about the barriers in a cross-cultural relationship, kind of similar in a way to My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Saori Oguri (Mao Inoue) is an aspiring manga artist and begins a relationship with Tony Lazlo (Jonathan Sherr), an American living in Japan. One of the first obstacles in a relationship like this is obviously language -- as Saori's mother explains, Saori did terrible in English in school. Fortunately though, Tony is fluent in Japanese.
The couple begins living together and at her sister's wedding, Saori brings Tony with to finally introduce her to the family. Although her parents are initially shocked, her mother (Shinobu Otake) quickly warms to Tony. Saori's father, however (Jun Kunimura) tells her that he would never consent to a marriage between Saori and Tony.
Saori is understandably hurt by this but she keeps it to herself, not even telling Tony about it. Although the pair plan to travel to America together so Tony can introduce Saori to his family, their relationship becomes strained because of Saori's worry over her father's disapproval as well as her increased focus on starting her manga career.
Japan doesn't have a very large immigrant population, only consisting of around 1-2% of the population. As such, there are a lot of stereotypes about foreigners. The movie does unfortunately exploit some of those stereotypes. It opens with a title card saying, "so your darling is a foreigner. Tell us about something weird he says or does" and then cuts to several real-life intercultural couples with the Japanese woman talking about something "weird" her boyfriend does. It really has no bearing on the movie and just seems to be included for a "let's laugh at the silly foreigners" gag. There are two other instances of these cutaways in the movie and they're just distracting.
Also, some of the things Tony doesn't seem to understand seem very strange. For example, there's one scene where people are jokingly insulting their family members and everyone's laughing. It's obvious it's all in good fun, yet Tony gets offended and asks them how they could say such things. My reaction when I saw this was, "dude, you're American. It's not unheard of."
Despite that, the movie is both funny and touching. Inoue is extremely bubbly and quirky and she's a joy to watch. Sherr's fluent in Japanese and his more grounded portrayal is a nice contrast to Inoue's franticness. And it's always great to see Kunimura, even in a small role. He's one of my favorite Japanese actors. He's probably best-known in the west as the Yakuza gangster who gets his head chopped off by O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill, but he's been in popular Japanese films like Audition and Ichi the Killer.
Whether or not you should see the movie depends on where your tastes lie. The film's not as good in its depiction of cross-culture romance as My Big Fat Greek Wedding was, and it's definitely a film intended for Japanese audiences. It can be sappy in places, but overall it's a fun movie.