dfle3 Earlier this year, I think, whilst channel surfing, I stumbled upon the latter part of this movie. For some reason, I was unable to stop viewing, despite missing most of this strange movie. Fortunately, SBS TV recently repeated this movie, and I was able to watch all of it.The plot of the movie is simple: a European woman (Amelie) who was raised as a child in Japan, longs to return there, and does, as an adult, to work for a firmThe entire movie is pretty much set in Amelie's work environment, but is hypnotic nonetheless.This strange film trades in the cultural divide between Europeans and the Japanese and is often very funny when dealing in this. Or maybe the world of Amelie is just plain strange...it's hard getting a fix on what she is like...clever or crazy...or both?Early scenes in the movie, where Amelie seeks to make work for herself are very Kafka-esque, as in his novels "The trial" and "The Castle". Pretty existentialist in its humour. These early scenes also feature Amelie's sensual voice-over narration, along with some nice music by Bach.A crucial dynamic in the movie is that between Amelie and her immediate Japanese supervisor, Fubuki (an attractive female that Amelie is entranced by). The strange (or culturally different) office politics of the firm are often times illustrated by the to and fro of Amelie and Fubuki's relationship.This is a movie that I would otherwise consider to be suitable for all ages if it weren't for a couple of scenes that are a bit disturbing...one is a fantasy scene, and the other is an excerpt from the movie "Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence". For those scenes, I wouldn't recommend youngsters watch this. As for the excerpt from "Merry Chrismtas Mr Lawrence", I wonder if this movie somehow shadows the earlier one (can't comment on this as I haven't seen it).The Green Guide (newspaper TV guide I read) lists this movie as a comedy and its review mentions that it was based on an autobiography. So, it's hard to say how many liberties have been taken for comedic effect.

Barbara This was supposed to be a comedy, but instead it is two hours that alternate between boredom and absurdity.The hero of the story is a well-trained, educated and skilled translator who -- instead of acting like an adult -- allows herself to become the whipping girl of a group of sadistic bosses.If any company like this actually exists in Japan, or anywhere else, I pity the poor workers. But I cannot waste my sympathy on anyone who chooses to stay and put up with the abuse and humiliation like this protagonist does.And frankly, the acting consisted primarily of Sylvie Testud looking either bewildered or blank. Even the "fantasy" interludes didn't add interest.A cross cultural workplace may a goldmine of comedic ideas, but this movie didn't manage to emerge with even a single nugget worth watching.

janos451 The 2003 "Fear and Trembling" is just now being released in the US, with the Northern California premiere taking place in San Francisco's Balboa Theater, Aug. 4-10, 2005.A mind-boggling view into the heart of Japan, "Fear and Trembling" includes some of the incongruous hilarity of Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" and the monstrous (if ceremonially correct) barbarity of Nagisa Oshima's "Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence," but it's also tremendously new and different. It will make you laugh, cringe, learn, and refuse to accept what appears obvious to those on the screen.As those two other Western perspectives on Japan, Alain Corneau's story is about the comedy and trauma of East-West relations, in this case through the epic (and yet deeply personal) struggle of a young Belgian woman "to fit in" with a Tokyo corporation.Amélie Northomb is the author of the autobiographical novel on which the film is based, Sylvie Testud is the brilliant actress who plays the role. Amélie was born in Tokyo, daughter of Brussels' ambassador to Japan (although the film doesn't say this), lived there until age 5 when her family returned to Belgium. She considered Japan her real home, maintaining a deeply-felt, romantic attachment to the language and culture of the country.In her mid-20s, Amélie gets a job as a translator with a giant corporation in Tokyo, and the film tells the story of her often incredible life of abuse, humiliation, and (to an outsider) near-insane routines that's the lot of Japan's salarymen... especially those who are women. Amélie goes from doing brilliant multilingual research - in violation, as it turns out, of company procedures, defying a supervisor's hatred of "odious Western pragmatism" - to resetting calendars... to serving coffee... to being made to copy the same document over and over again... to months of cleaning restrooms.Impossible? Well, yes, but it is both "a true story" in fact, and Corneau - the great director of "Tous les matins du monde" and "Nocturne indien" - somehow gets the audience a few tentative steps closer to the "Japanese mind." It is, of course, only a partial success, but in the end, there is a fragile, right-brain appreciation of what is "most Japanese" in the film: Amélie's persistence through it all, "to save face." At the same time, much of the conflict remains incomprehensible to an outsider, such as a supervisor's order to Amélie (hired because of language ability) "to forget Japanese" when there are visitors to the office. His explanation: "How could our business partners have any feeling of trust in the presence of white girl who understood their language? From now on you will no longer speak Japanese." In the large, uniformly excellent Japanese cast, the name to learn is that of Kaori Tsuji, an amazing physical presence: a 6-foot-tall Japanese woman with a face that's both icily "perfect" and achingly vulnerable. In her film debut, Tsuji successfully copes with a major role that requires projecting many deep, often conflicting emotions - without changing her uniform, constant "correct expression."Personally, "Fear and Trembling" came as a surprise, almost a shock. I thought, mistakenly, that after living in Hawaii for a decade, and having besides innumerable points of contact with Japanese culture and people, I wouldn't feel about an apparently truthful picture of the country as if I observed some bizarre and incomprehensible aliens... but I did.

sumii Hi all, I've watched this movie and enjoyed it as a Japanese born in Tokyo and lived there for ~30 years (though my wife, also Japanese, was p***ed off.;-) Just a short comment on questions like "can this be real?" - my answer is clear and obvious "no". It could possibly happen to _Japanese_ female employees in a few nasty companies 30 years ago, but is simply impossible to "Westerners" as they are specially respected. Whether this is good or bad is another question.By the way, some of the text appearing at the official web site (http://www.cinemaguild.com/fearandtrembling/) as background decoration actually looks like Korean or something. It is definitely not Japanese. I'm not talking about the Katakana characters outside the flash window, but the white background inside the flash window itself, though it is very hard to see on some monitors.