jurijuri I am Japanese who have worked in Tokyo for 2years and currently working in Sweden.I wonder how much author of original book and director of this movie know about Japanese work culture because the story is for me just an old joke that looks like something from the 1900s Yellow peril or "Rising sun" by Michael Crichton, its very stereotyped view of what the Japanese are doing or what they are like, kind of saying that there's reason to not trust them and not like them. It is the typical way of showing how "different" Japanese people and Japanese culture is, and how impossible it is for a foreigner to even begin to understand the weird and bizarre psyche of the Japanese salary slave, scary robot like people who act in a too perfect manner to be truly human, maybe not even have a soul. Why are these differences always highlighted? A celebration to Western work culture and thinking is what this is, her creative brain was suffocated in the Japanese system, the Japanese only breed mindless robots who are good with numbers but have the social skills of a robot. It is sad that this movie is by some believed to be a somewhat accurate picture of Japan and its people.

waltcosmos I enjoyed some of the movies moments, particularly the scenes related to the calendars. But on the whole, the mid-level managers reminded me of a Japanese supervisor I once had in a company I worked in, in Silicon Valley. I was once staying late, doing bench work when a white mid-level manager was showing the building and workspace to a visitor. At some point, the mid-level manager asked if anyone had a thermometer. This was a singularly odd request, but I just so happened to have one so I offered it to him. Instead of being grateful, or even giving me a polite "thank you", he icily told me it wasn't calibrated.??? The next day, my jap supervisor called me into his office and erupted in rage over my "transgression" the day before with Don, the obnoxious impolite imbecile who was angry because I didn't give him a thermometer that came out of Apollo's as s. Perhaps I should have shoved it up his own. In any event, I came within an inch of being fired, but it was only my absolute self-control that defused the situation with these two losers, Vic and Don. Vic finally resigned, hopefully he reviewed his life and realizing it was meaningless, he opted for early suicide. Don still works for the company.As someone else has commented, it's a mindset such as the one revealed in this film that explains why the economy of that country is essentially in the toilet. Because it belongs there. Perhaps also, it is time for those wonderful figures from Japanese mythology, the fat man and the little boy, to visit them again.

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.

Ana_Banana Luckily I read the book after I have seen the movie. Actually they transposed the book almost literally, with plenty of voice-over reading Amelie's comments from the novel. But anyway, it was enjoyable due to its real humor and anti-system irony. This movie has an atmosphere similar in a way to a kind of subtle, feminine "Office Space". Well, so ends another of our myths (Japanese efficiency)... I'm kidding! (Am I?) Don't you think Amelie is some kind of a modern days, female Svejk? She likes to appear dumb just in order to explore the stupidities of the system and to reveal them by obeying to anything. The implicit irony is the same in both characters. And Sylvie Testud was a pleasant surprise for me in that role, looking fragile but betrayed by her intelligent eyes. So, if you want even better fun, read the book!