At the movies: Sidonia in Japan… why you should see this sweet movie with Isabelle Hooper?

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Sidon goes to Japan to launch his bestseller. Despite the dedication of her Japanese publisher, with whom she discovers the country’s traditions, she gradually loses her luck… especially when she comes face to face with her husband, who has been missing for several years!

Isabel in Japan

The title may remind me of books like “Martin on the Farm”, or the series Emily in Paris, another story of a change of scenery. With fewer clichés about Eliza Girard’s third feature film. The first one for those who love Japan, worn by Valerie Donzel and Jeremy Elkaim in 2010, was called Belleville-Tokyo.

Fourteen years later, he leaves France for the land of the rising sun, in the company of a novelist who seems to have lost his inspiration and zest for life. And who finds herself confronting her past in two ways: because she must help re-release her bestseller, and because she encounters the ghost of her late husband.

“It’s because we’re in Japan, it’s a ghost country”, the latter says to him as he gets used to his presence and stops running from the room in which he appears, so lit that August Diehl, his interpreter, gives the impression of being in another world. And the audience understands that this story could not have developed anywhere else.

“Your words are like a secret echo of my story” : This line is spoken by Tsuyoshi Ihara, whose character embodies the concept of death associated with Japan, as his family was marked by the tragedies of Hiroshima and the Kobe earthquake that occurred in 1995. Truly experienced, it is in this country that Sidonie will be able to overcome her husband’s death.

In these places, where ghosts are more part of popular culture than in France (“They live all around us,” the heroine understands) and where we protect our feelings as a novelist. And that’s why Sidonia is interesting in Japan.

This confrontation between two modes of thinking and the art of living that allows her not to play on the expected clichés in a story of this style, but to ensure that this woman looks the past in the eyes for the last time and settles her account with him. , and then move forward. And maybe allow yourself to love and create again.

A gentle, slow and cinematic film

With a slow pace, closer to the Japanese productions, the feature film requires a little patience from the viewer before he can get into the story, not knowing exactly what Antoine’s ghost is at first. But like Sidonia with the latter, it takes a while to tame her and slowly and gently seduce her.

All in a cinematic film that makes several references to director Kenji Mizoguchi, one of the great masters of Japanese cinema, one of whose characters shares the same last name. The director of The Intendant Sansho or The Crucified Lovers is mentioned often enough to make you want to watch his work. Just to stay in the atmosphere of this movie.