Japanese Story

Funny that I was talking about Toni Collette yesterday, because it turned out there were two films on TV last night starring her. I watched one; Japanese Story, about a company executive who hosts a Japanese company executive for a visit to Aus, and drives him around the outback.

I really really liked it. It felt very long but I didn't get bored. Loved Toni's performance. A very poignant moment was when Hiro dies - he dives straight into a waterhole and into a sugmerged log, they're in the middle of nowhere and she has to get him out and take him somewhere - and there's all the emotion of despair and panic and disbelief all at once. I really related to what she was doing, I felt her panic and shock and despair.

The sequence of her dragging him out of the water and trying to get him into the car went on for a long time... and yet it worked. All she was doing was struggling to drag a dead body up and out and into the car, but it was so real that it was riveting to watch even when it seemed she was never going to manage it and had to keep trying again. I was fascinated by the fact that I was still fasscinated... because it would be very easy to do that scene completely wrong and have it be boring and frustrating to watch.

Toni was great to watch; one of those people you can't take your eyes off for long. She's not *beautiful* in the conventional sense - she has big crooked teeth and rough skin, but she's so interesting to look at.

Ramble ramble... oh, and the other actors were great too. :-) I didn't catch the Japanese man's name but he was really interesting too, quite funny.