Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (2009)

A dramatic thriller that centers on a fish-market employee who doubles as a contract killer.

Director:

Isabel Coixet

Writer:

Isabel Coixet

Stars:

Rinko Kikuchi, Sergi López, Min Tanaka

1 win & 2 nominations.

Cast

Credited cast:
Rinko Kikuchi	...	Ryu
Sergi López	...	David
Min Tanaka	...	Narrador
Manabu Oshio	...	Yoshi
Takeo Nakahara	...	Nagara
Hideo Sakaki	...	Ishida
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Kôsuke Hishinuma
Jun Matsuo	...	Pukka
Joan Potau
Josep Sandoval

Storyline

A dramatic thriller that centers on a fish-market employee who doubles as a contract killer.

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Plot Keywords:

fish market | suicide | sound recording | gun | male frontal nudity | 

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Genres:

Drama | Thriller

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Certificate:

R

Details

Official Sites:

Official site Official site [jp]

Country:

Spain

Language:

Japanese English Catalan

Release Date:

28 August 2009 (Spain)

Also Known As:

Carte des sons de Tokyo

Filming Locations:

Barcelona, Cataluña, Spain

Box Office

Budget:

$8,000,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Mediapro, Versátil Cinema

Technical Specs

Runtime:

109 min

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

Isabel Coixet claims that came up with the idea of Rinko Kikuchi's character when she was promoting The Secret Life of Words in Tokio. Coixet was taking pictures on a walk through the city. She arrived at a fish market and tried to take one of a girl who was cleaning fish. The girl refused to get photographed, so Coixet started imagining possible reasons.

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Goofs

After David joins Ryu at the Love Hotel after cutting his hand, Rinko Kikuchi (Ryu) is laying on a couch. Her shoulder is covered in the two close ups but largely uncovered after the cut where the camera is further from her.

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Crazy Credits

After the final credits there's a short scene with the mysterious plant person in the subway tunnel.

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Connections

Referenced in Stockholms 20th International Film Festival (2009)

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Soundtracks

"One Dove"
Performed by Antony and the Johnsons

User Reviews

No map and very few sounds

What can I say? The movie did not live up to the promise of its opening scene. It's well-shot and nicely lit, with a few postcard-perfect views of Tokyo, but the story makes no sense, the characters are poorly written, and Sergi Lopez is horribly miscast as the male lead. The ending is a formulaic cop-out.

The trailer tries to sell the movie as a sex thriller, which it's most decidedly not. It's a tale of two lost souls in a big city who try to find solace in each other, but fail, for various reasons.

Rinko Kikuchi performs well as a quiet fish market worker who moonlights as a paid assassin, but her character remains an enigma throughout the movie, which makes it difficult for the audience to connect or empathize with her. She bares her body more than once in fairly explicit sex scenes - and what a nice body it is - one only wishes the director could give us similar insight into her soul.

Sergi Lopez does his usual macho strut with a hint of menace which might have worked in a different movie, but feels utterly out of place in an upscale wine merchant from modern-day Tokyo. He is very unconvincing as Rinko's love interest, and is further hindered by his corpulent, scary hairy physique and significant age difference with his co-star. I could not for the life of me believe in chemistry between the two of them.

The omnipresent narrator, an older sound engineer who maintains chaste friendship with Rinko's character and gives the movie its title, is the most sympathetic of all, but he is more of a convenient voice-over device than a fully-fleshed character. Other parts are one-dimensional at best.

Recommended only for indiscriminate art-house fans, Japan fetishists, and furries.