I am making a habit of liking films like this. I fondly recall ignoring the pitiful attempts at action in Jean Delannoy's Macao, l'enfer du jeu (1942) and revelling in the unusual intergenerational love scenes between Mireille Balin and Erich von Stroheim. 2009 saw other unloved unfocused occidental-oriental concoctions, such as Ming-liang's Visage (also at Cannes with this movie), and Tran Anh Hung's I Come With The Rain, both of which I adore. Whilst many look for perfection in films I am looking to fall in love with a movie. In real life when you fall in love with someone you surrender to their flaws because you see something sympathetic about them, you admire their courage in making themselves vulnerable to you. This movie makes no pretence of perfect love, Ryu and David are like the frequently pictured learner drivers at the test centre, stuttering along hesitantly. Love is very difficult, men and women are so different, so painfully ignorant of each others' ways, show me perfect lovers, I'll show you folie à deux.Yes, as with Delannoy, the action here, or attempts at it, are fairly risible, but they are also besides the point, Map Of The Sounds of Tokyo is about two unhappy people finding oblivion in a sexy hotel room modelled on a metro carriage. In my opinion it is a story worth knowing. My final comment is that there has been talk here that Sergi López was not up to a romantic lead in this movie, also that the film is not realistic as regards Tokyo. One point of contemporary earthy realism that those commentators miss is that Western men punch above their weight in Tokyo due to their relative lack of timidity.Do not punish this movie for failing to keep up the pretence of genre, embrace it.

I knew nothing about this film or the director and thus had no expectations. I liked the film's title and the opening scene was very striking. I found the story to be a bit convoluted but was very drawn in by the main character, Ryu and her interactions with the two men in her life, one an enigmatic sound recordist and the other, the Spaniard who was the lover of the woman who killed herself and the man that Ryu is supposed to assassinate. She doesn't reveal herself to either man though both ask her to. So we also have no idea who she really is and why she does what she does. This mystery is part of the genre and as such, I accept it. It makes her all the more vulnerable as she begins to blossom through love's power.

One of less warmly received movies at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival seems to have gotten into competition more on the basis of the director Isabel Coixet's credentials, than actual quality. More or less openly inspired by "Lost in Translation" this Spanish production garnishes a more ambitious route suggesting inner knowledge on Tokio reality, not using it as a symbolic vessel of detachment, but as a well-treaded path following a recognisable motif of a would-be assassin, who falls in love with her prey.By day a physical labourer on the fish market, by night a contract-killer Ryu (Rinko Kikuchi) is hired out by Japanese CEO Nagara (Takeo Nakahara) to avenge the suicide of his daughter, driven apparently to the brink by a failed love affair (the specific nature of this fall-out is never revealed). The target is Spanish wine-seller David (Sergi López), a slightly overweight love-machine with animal magnetism distraught by the suicide and contemplating the same fate. During research Ryu compulsively happens to chance a short affair with the hapless foreigner, a serious breach of contract...Told with fluid imagery filled less with noise of Tokio, but more of Japanese renditions of Eastern hits, including a pretty awful karaoke attempt at Depeche Mode by the uninspirational Sergi Lopez. At times sensual Coixet entices with nicely shot frames and lingering emotions, but the unfortunate reality is that the fleeting story of "Map of the Sounds of Tokyo" is a muddled collage of beautiful visuals, which make nice eye candy, but a forgettable movie. Nonetheless the invitation to entertain in the less frequented areas of Japanese movies, like the fish market or the automated hotels, does offer gratification, albeit scarcely sufficient to supplement the plot.The slowly drifting story also falls into the pitfall of English language usage, as both Kikuchi and Lopez struggle to sell the part, when forced into unfamiliar language territory, given an off-key performance, which creates an awkward distance and ambivalence to the characters as well as dissolves the mood and focus set out by the carefully constructed layers of imagery focusing the mood.Performance-wise the strongest input is guaranteed by older-timer Nakahara, who given the limited screen-time inputs an unwavering presence, while the opening scene at a sushi restaurant is one of the sole reasons why the picture is actually worth a watch. It essentially also lays out the underlying premise - people come to Japan to input their projections of how the country looks, while Japanese in an attempt to be good hosts adhere to their expectations. Unfortunately Coixet fails to listen to her own advice.

Well, what can I say? I am Spanish and I am a little familiarized with Japan and Japanese culture, my girlfriend is a Japanese girl living in Tokyo and I have visited the city. In my humble opinion, the portrait of Tokyo in this movie could be one of its limited virtues because at least is trying to show a different point of view focused not only on the typical tourist pictures but also on some not so glamorous places as small restaurants of ramen, a cemetery or a market for selling fish. Soundtrack is interesting and well chosen too, and nothing to complain about photography of the French Jean-Claude Larrieu. About Isabel Coixet, her work as a director is competent and even it has a "touch" more Japanese than Spanish (more concentrated on the silences or natural sounds than the dialogs or artificial noises, for example).Until here the positive. Now the not so positive, always in my opinion. First, the story. A professional killer falling in love with his (her) victim and breaking his (her) own rules with bad consequences. How many times we have watched this kind of story in a movie? Too many times, I think. Second (and specially), the main actor. Sergi López. He is a respected actor here in Spain, but sorry, to choose him as the man able to light some fire in the cold heart of Ryu is one of the biggest mistakes I have seen in a casting for a movie. Sergi López, let's be honest, is not tall, not sophisticated, too old for Ryu and also scandalously fat for this kind of character. He is not charming, his face is the face of a farmer or a boxer and his voice is annoying in its vulgarity.Again, sorry Sergi López, but nobody can believe that a very young Japanese girl can kill herself because of you, and also another young girl can fall in love with you until the extreme to risk her own life. Everything in only one month. Wow, are you some kind of Spanish chubby Bond with a special skill for melting Japanese girls? Isabel Coixet is a woman, and it's supposed a clever one. Does she believe the script? I don't believe it! And sorry sorry, even I can't believe López managing a wine shop for gourmet clients in Tokyo.