E-Mail This Article to a Friend Talk about Japanese Story goes beyond words BY PETER KEOUGH
	Japanese Story. Directed by Sue Brooks. Written by Alison Tilson. With Toni Collette, Gotaro Tsunashima, Matthew Dyktynski, Lynette Curran, Yumiko Tanaka, and Kate Atkinson. A Samuel Goldwyn Films release. 99 minutes. At the Tk.

Two wandering souls from different cultures bond in the outback: Australian director Sue Brooks no doubt had Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout (1971) in mind when making her affecting, if occasionally belabored and clichéd, road movie/romance Japanese Story. The nomads in this version are not a city girl and an aboriginal, however, but Sandy (Toni Collette), a geologist, and Hiromitsu (Gotaro Tsunashima), a Japanese businessman and potential client whom she’s taking on a tour of the Mars-like Pilbara desert.

Collette’s Sandy is no desert bloom; she’s hard-edged, a workaholic, and no-nonsense. "I’m a geologist," she complains when given the assignment, "not a geisha." Instead, Tsunashima’s Hiromitsu fills that role: slight, fussy, and with porcelain prettiness, he becomes almost at first glance the object of Sandy’s appreciative eye. Their initial relationship, though, bristles with hostility and cultural miscommunication. Talking with a friend before their departure, Sandy describes her charge as "a jerk." Talking with a colleague on his cell- phone in Japanese as the two set off on their journey, Hiromitsu describes his guide as "loud" and with "a big bum."

Call it a dry-land version of The African Queen with Collette in the Bogart role as the ornery (but ambitious and dutiful) river rat and Tsunashima in the Hepburn role as the forbidding (but flighty and irresponsible) spinster. This reversal provides Story with one of its greatest virtues, as the inevitable sexual tension mounts and the woman, not the man, asserts control.

A breakdown helps set the stage for their surmounting of the language, culture, and gender barriers, initiating a dialogue and mating dance eloquently rendered by the exquisite acting (Collette’s vulpine face and intense gaze during one of the love scenes is one of the sexiest screen moments of the past year) and underscored by the stunning landscapes. Like Roeg in Walkabout, cinematographer Ian Baker contrasts the inhumanities of nature and of technology, though with more wit than weirdness: a long shot of Sandy and Hiromitsu’s tiny SUV passing a huge triple-trailer truck in the vast nowhere is both funny and terrifying. Otherwise, the film bears little resemblance to Ozu’s Tokyo Story, other than the title; Brooks demonstrates more slickness than finesse in taking the film through its predictable dramatic clinches.

Until, that is, about two-thirds of the way through, when she and screenwriter Alison Tilson take a drastic narrative turn. Maybe it’s for effect, or maybe it’s because they think the open road they have been touring has hit a dead end. Either way, they cop out. "I have heavy obligations," Hiromitsu confides to Sandy as their liaison seems to have reached its idyllic peak, "I must get through it." The filmmakers beg to differ and don’t face the obligation of resolving the issues they raise.

Such as racial stereotyping. Along with such recent films as The Last Samurai and even the far superior Lost in Translation, Story falls back on some of the more insidious cinema conventions in its characterization (for a look at how a similar story can be told without resorting to such triteness, check out Fridrik Thor Fridriksson’s Cold Fever). Hiromitsu sings badly at a karaoke bar, can’t hold his liquor, must learn the difference between "desert" and "dessert," and maintains an exaggerated sense of honor when he refuses to call for help after they are stranded. When an old geezer says, "In the war we thought you guys were coming after us. . . . Now you blokes own the place," the couple pass over the remark in embarrassed silence. A tepid koto plays throughout the soundtrack, and about the only substantive comment on cultural differences is Hiromitsu’s remark, "[Australia] has a lot of space and no people; Japan has a lot of people and no space."

Maybe the people and the spaces make up for what the words don’t say in Japanese Story. Maybe too Brooks and Tilson’s intent is to subvert stereotyping in general by reversing the gender roles and pointing out the stereotypes endemic in our genre expectations. In the end, the humanity of the actors overcomes the insensitivities of the story. Hiromitsu is touching in his fragility, pride, and tenderness, Collette scorches with her passion and earthiness, and both are upstaged by a single tear from Yumiko Tanaka as Hiromitsu’s wife.

None leave a trace on the alien landscape. "There is nothing," says Hiromitsu, sounding the film’s truest note of awe, sublimity, and terror. "It scares me."