Monotonous Japanese Hipster Love: NORWEGIAN WOOD Film Review

By Norm Schrager at February 2, 2012 | 12:23 am | Print

2 / 5 stars

You don’t have to be a genius to guess that the song Norwegian Wood will, at some point, be played in the film, Norwegian Wood. What you won’t guess is that it’s warbled by a Japanese woman on acoustic guitar, serenading a star-crossed young couple at a rural psych rehab enclave. In the midst of a Japanese language film, in which she’s chirping in English (of course), with a melodramatic sincerity usually reserved for corny campfire sing-alongs. How you’ll wish the rest of this monotonous film was as bizarre and unexplained as this little nugget.

The attempt is there, directed by Vietnamese filmmaker Tran Anh Hung (The Scent of Green Papaya), but that just makes matters worse. In this tale of young almost-lovers, based on the book by Haruki Murakami, the characters’ hipster vibe plays as a flat line of indifference–punctuated by strained efforts of coolness.

In 1967 Tokyo, college student Watanabe (Kenichi Matsuyama) travels back and forth between visiting his troubled, lifelong friend, Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi, The Brothers Bloom) and hanging with an on-campus cutie, Midori (Kiko Mizuhara). Watanabe professes a painful, devoted love to the first, but has enough sexual urges to be interested in the second. Whether it’s Japanese stoicism or the ambivalence of youth, it’s pretty tough for us to gauge any emotional attachment from the trio. Or from us.

Somewhere in there is an interesting allegory about the futility of young love–perhaps it exists in the book–as Watanabe can’t have a healthy sexual relationship with either girl. Naoko is haunted by a personal tragedy and talks at length with a glazed look about not being able to have the right, um, natural lubrication. Midori is a tease, describing trysts that will never happen, sliding away with a smile when Watanabe utters the wrong reply. For unintended laughs, there’s a lot of overly simplistic talk about erections. For a moment, I thought the film was called Norwegian Woody.

I suppose there could be some suspense in whether or not the kid will get properly laid. But that’s not much to rest a 2-hour-plus romantic drama on, especially when Norwegian Wood feels like it could be a couple steps away from something like The Notebook, which would be a real thrill for fans of the genre. The film’s not without occasional charms though: Tran makes a few smart, unexpected visual choices and some conversations have a well-edited, engrossing tension. Mizuhara’s quiet, come-hither confidence is fun to watch, and there’s an excellent bit performance by Eriko Hatsune (star of the cult hit, Spiral) who receives full attention from Tran’s camera, and with good reason.

But there’s an overall flatness to Norwegian Wood that, like the movie, stretches longer than it should. Perhaps it has something to do with Tran not speaking Japanese, yet writing and directing the film? There’s a particular visual device he falls back on, having his actors walk and walk while sharing secrets and contemplating their futures, at different speeds and varying paces away from one another. The idea engages at first, but eventually just adds to the tedium.

There’s a certain conceit in naming your book after one of the most beautiful Beatles songs of all time–it ain’t like Douglas Coupland stealing from The Smiths to title a novel Girlfriend in a Coma. The movie, then, has an almost unfortunate challenge to live up to. If only Tran Anh Hung had relied on the song as a framework for the film: its glorious melody, flowing rhythm, soulful story. Now that would have been a tale of young love worth watching.

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