The movie was shown in the theater at Hartnet Hall on the Minot State University campus. Many decades ago, out of high school, when I attended a few quarters of classes at what was called Minot State College, I attended a mathematics class in this very building. It was after hours now so I wasn't able to go through the building, but it appears to be totally a liberal arts building now.
I had just put into the oven a batch of cranberry/pumpkin muffins so as usual I was running late and I literally mean running. The theater was a little over a mile from mom's house and I ran most of the way there as I had 10 minutes to make it on time for the movie. Fortunately the wind was at my back and much of the distance was downhill. I made it to the theater and settled into a seat several minutes before the movie began. Running in the cool air gave me a small cough, and without water, it took a while into the movie for the tickle in my throat to leave.
How technology has changed. When I was younger movies at the university were shown on film projectors. Now as I waited for the movie to start, on the large screen, was the DVD's home page. The image of a face in white was floating about the screen and the music would loop over and over while "Play movie", "Extras", "Preview", etc were across the bottom of the screen.
On the screen classical music by Johann Sebastian Bach was being played. The image was a face of a woman painted in white against a backdrop of white. The face floated around and across the screen and sometimes only part of the face could be seen.
The only colors were her eyes when open, and the dark curve of her eyelashes when her eyes were closed. Also on her upper and lower lips were painted two small red squares of lipstick: bright red in the center of her lips below her nose.
While this style of lipstick may be a geisha's, I thought of Charlie Chaplin's mustache. You know, a partial mustache when the norm was a full one. Even though the rest of her lips were painted white to match her face you could see the outlines of her lips. (See the movie poster below for the image.) Interestingly, this image is only found on the poster and never in the movie.
In the theater there were less than 20 people in total so I had easy choice of a good seat. Just after the lights went dark and the movie started a couple came and scurried down to the row in front of me and just to my left. Darn, now I couldn't later stretch my long legs over the seat back in front of me during the movie.
Of the couple he wore a heavy turtleneck sweater, more of a Winter sweater than a Spring sweater. With his Nordic 30-something good looks and this sweater, he stereotypically looked to be a Liberal Arts professor. She looked ok and was more casually dressed than him and occasionally would snuggle close to him. Ah, the stuff of love, when a woman snuggles against a man. That is how one woman started to win my heart.
With such a small crowd many seemed to be French language students or French ex-patriots. This was especially noticeable after the film was over based on the women's looks and clothing attire and the French being spoken.
The movie shown was "Fear and Trembling" ("Stupeur et tremblements"). It is 2003 comedy from France about a young Belgian woman, Amelie, who, feeling Japanese, works at a large Japanese multi-national company for one year in 1990 and tries to fit in.Ah, a comedy. That would be good. I should have expected as this was a foreign film - a French film - the comedy would be different. This movie's comedy tone was sardonic. It also had a message and I think the message was more important to the filmmaker than the comedy.
I think the filmmaker was operating under "Give them enough rope and let them hang themselves" in regards as to portraying the Japanese. The Japanese way was dominant and superior in the Japanese eyes, but as much as the Belgian woman tried to fit in, her way was the Western way and considered inferior. While the Western approaches Amelie used for situations was wrong for this environment, the Japanese way often appeared to be cruel, rigid, nonsensical, mean, and pointless.
The more Amelie tried to fit in, become Japanese, or be submissive to Fubuki, her female work leader, the more Fubuki showed her dominance and cruelty. All the while Amelie in a voice over mocked the environment she wanted to fit into, even while swooning over Fubuki's looks, which gave a lesbian undertone to Amelie's attraction to Fubuki and desire to please her.
The film wasn't boring, the lead actresses were attractive, at times the film was mildly amusing, but the film's tone had a feel of smugness, or being superior from a feigned inferior stance.
Fubuki was a 6 foot tall Japanese woman, taller than most of the men in the movie. Usually all the strands of her hair were all in place, although two photos of her I chose show otherwise. Her look was cold, clean, and severe in black business dress attire. She stood straight and tall. She had a look of dominance.
Amelie on the other hand was disheveled. Her clothes were often rumpled and of a color palette out of sync with the others in the office. Her hair was always unruly. Her walk was her own. Her height appeared to be a little over 5 foot and she looked to be a mouse next to Fubuki's "cat". The more she tried to fit into the Japanese way, the more she sincerely - or insincerely - took on a submissive posture and tone.
The line between message and comedy is a hard thing for a movie comedy to achieve successfully. There was more of a message than true comedy in this movie. Even the message was muddled. Was the movie more about the cultural differences between the Japanese and the West? Or was it more of a story of Amelie and Fubuki's strange dominant/submissive relationship across a cultural divide? In the end the movie left me unfulfilled.
I noticed that "stupeur" from the original French title appeared to be translated to fear. Stupeur sounds like "stupor", which is not fear in English.
stuporI translated "fear" into French and got "peur". Okay...
- A state of reduced consciousness or sensibility
- a state in which one has difficulty in thinking or using one's senses
Having watched the movie the correct title in English would be "Stupor and Trembling". The Japanese culture of work, mind numbing dull, senseless, and useless work mixed with cruel intimidation, seems to reduce a person to a stupor. I guess "Stupor and Trembling" wouldn't make an appealing English movie title. However, as the original French title uses the word stupor, that gives you an insight into the tone and reason of the movie.
If you do visit the movie's imdb site for more information, there is a link to a preview of the movie.
For those interested in a similar subject on the Japanese/Western cultural divide, I recommend "Lost in Translation" from the same year. The movie's dreaminess and the Bill Murray / Scarlett Johansson romance are much more interesting.
After the movie was over I walked home alone. No one was outside and only the occasional vehicle drove by, and none once I left the university's property. It was dark and chilly now. In my hand I carried several handouts for a play and a book I had gotten from Hartnet Hall after the movie was over. Once one hand got cold I would switch the handouts to the other hand.
A large, dull, fuzzy cloud was overhead. Try as I may I could not see the stars overhead. Above the western horizon was a small gash in the clouds where the lighter night sky could be seen.
As I walked up the steep hill along 7th St I often would walk backwards so as to view the lights of downtown and the town in the valley. When I attended junior high school, up this very steep hill, this was my route from school to home.
The houses that were along the west side of the street until the land dropped away were the same as when I had walked this route decades ago. But they were unfamiliar to me. I have no memories and they have no specific features for me to remember them. All I remember is how, then as now, once I passed the last house there suddenly was only enough land for the sidewalk next to the road and the houses ended I could look way down one block over onto the houses, apartments, and streetlights along 8th street as the street made its way at a much more leisurely pace up the hill.
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