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<\/p>\nThe artistic links between France and Japan run (perhaps surprisingly) deep. The French Impressionists were obsessed with Japanese woodblock prints, for example. In the 1950s, while French filmmakers and audiences embraced Japanese cinema, with Akira Kurosawa\u2019s Rashomon (1950) and Kinugasa Teinosuke\u2019s Gate of Hell (1954) featured at the Cannes Film Festival; while Alain Resnais\u2019 seminal anti-war film Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1954) was set and filmed in Japan. Now writer-director \u00c9lise Girard walks in Renais\u2019 footsteps with Sidonie in Japan.<\/p>\n
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This often intriguing but also often oblique film uses the familiar trope of the foreigner adrift in a strange land (Lost in Translation, anyone?). Girard\u2019s script tries to break free of the obvious by introducing a supernatural element. This works for a while, but the film\u2019s uneven pacing and some rather odd choices towards the end rob it of some of its intended impact.<\/p>\n
The Sidonie of the title is Sidonie Perceval (Isabelle Huppert), a writer. In the opening scenes, she takes what seems to be an impulsive journey from France to Osaka. It turns out though that the trip has been organised by her Japanese publisher Kenzo Mizoguchi (Tsuyoshi Ihara) to promote a new edition of her most popular novel. It turns out that Sidonie hasn\u2019t written anything for some time and has become something of a recluse. But Kenzo has somehow convinced her to take the long journey to Asia. Kenzo – with typical Japanese efficiency – has planned the details of the tour meticulously. Although Sidonie struggles with unfamiliar Japanese social mores, she slowly comes to recognise that, away from her life in France, she has an odd kind of freedom. On a sightseeing interlude between press conferences, Kenzo mentions that Japan is \u201cthe land of ghosts\u201d. Soon enough, his description becomes stunningly real, as the ghost of Sidonie\u2019s late husband Antoine (August Diehl) joins her on her trip around the country.<\/p>\n
I found the first half of Sidonie in Japan a delightful, if gentle, story of love and loss. The main issue is that Girard isn\u2019t able to sustain the mood or the narrative even at the film\u2019s modest 95 minutes running time. The second half meanders along providing more of the same. Even the \u201cbig\u201d twist at the end isn\u2019t much of a surprise and is basically the only place the film could go. So rather than being emotionally resonant in the way of say David Lowery\u2019s A Ghost Story, it falls rather flat.<\/p>\n