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Reviews Counted:87
Fresh:58
Rotten:29
Average Rating:6.4/10
Consensus: An emotional film where Toni Collette gets to show her impressive range.
Theatrical Release:Dec 31, 2003 Limited
Box Office: $189,209
Synopsis: This romantic drama stars Toni Collette as Sandy, a high-strung Australian geologist assigned to escort Japanese businessman Hirotmitsu (Gotaro Tsunashima) on a tour through the outback. Ostensibly... [More]
Starring: Toni Collette, Gotaro Tsunashima, Lynette Curran, Yumiko Tanaka
Director: Sue Brooks
Toni Collette's extraordinary performance, Alison Tilson's sensitive script and Ian Baker's sensational cinematography add up to a surprising film set against the rugged backdrop of Western Australia's stunning Pilbara desert.
Bedtime Story seems a more appropriate name for the snoozy and unconvincing Australian drama.
Collette gives as commanding a performance as any this year.
Top CriticYet another addition to the renaissance in women-focused movies, that engages the viewer with fresh perspectives on emotion and desire.
Sue Brooks's film, a stretched-out short story set against the natural sublimity of the Australian wilderness, provides Toni Colette with an opportunity to display her range.
Top CriticIt isn't a major entry in the growing genre of Australian desert dramas, but audiences everywhere should respond to the fundamental human emotions it explores.
Time and space being relative, director Sue Brooks' characters are dwarfed by their environment, their moments made all the more fleeting, and precious, by the black hole of infinity lying at the edge of the screen.
Top CriticThe simple story unfolds with grace and reserve, allowing Collette to shine in an actor's showcase of the highest rank.
Tsunashima is superb, and a never-better Collette has a radiant intensity that hits you right in the heart.
Top CriticThe platform gives Collette plenty of room to strut her acting chops, which she does with subtlety.
By its end, [it] has outgrown its unassuming premise and taken the audience on an emotional journey that is all the more affecting because of its serendipitous nature.
Brooks and screenwriter Alison Tilson pursue a notion of Asian-influenced understatement in their own sunny, big-boned Australian way.
Top CriticFor all its flaws, Japanese Story gives Collette a welcome chance to shine in a lead role.
Fans of Toni Collette and alien environments will find this trip worth taking
Despite a uniquely captivating setting and the reassuring presence of Toni Collette, Japanese Story never feels convincing enough to be engaging.
Compelling and edgy.
Top CriticAside from a ringing endorsement for the cathartic effects of grief, Japanese Story doesn't offer much in the way of universal truths.
As Sofia Coppola did in Lost in Translation, director Sue Brooks here takes the structural elements of cliche fish-out- of-water stories and opposites-attract romances and forms them into something more personal.
The reward is uncommon insight into the beauty and pain that can be wrought by a desert wilderness
Toni Collette is finally given ample room to strut her considerable acting stuff in Japanese Story.
Top Critic
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