Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1187474
12 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 24 NOVEMBER 2019 FILM FILM THE marriage between the universal and specific is perhaps one of the great boons of storytelling. Being able to immerse a listener, reader or viewer in a story that is emotionally engaging but which hints at greater philosophical or histori- cal truths or moments will likely always be one of the most significant take-aways we can hope for when we tuck into a (largely) made- up story about characters making their way through the world, whatever world that may be. Adapting the award- winning novel by Susan- na Jones, writer-director Wash Westmoreland is very much poised to take advantage of this particu- lar branch of storytelling, plunging our nervy protag- onist with a past, Lucy Fly (Alicia Vikander) into 1989 Tokyo, where she has come to escape a troubled past by working as a translator. She begins a stumbling, will-they-won't-they ro- mance with local noodle- chef-by-day, photographer- by-night Teji Matsuda (Naoki Kobayashi) roughly around the same time she is nudged to make friends with another expat arrival, the extroverted Lily Bridg- es (Riley Keough). Things come to a head when the three of them take a trip to Sedo Island, with Lucy's traumatic past returning to cloud her judgement and actions, as events loop back to the ominous police-sta- tion set up which introduc- es us to the story… Lucy's traumatic past reduces her to a para- noid wreck at the slightest nudge in the wrong direc- tion, and what is meant to be a healing trip away from the worst of it all – i.e., her self-imposed exile to Japan – ends up adding a pinch of disorientation to that toxic cocktail. She's certainly an engaging if not entirely likeable protago- nist to have in a psycho- logical thriller, though the razor-sharp subjectivity required to make that point of view effective is blunted somewhat by Westmore- land's understandable de- sire to linger on the exter- nal details of the setting. And that's where the film attempts to mix the macro with the micro. The Tokyo it invites us to look at through the eyes of our idiosyncratic char- acters is one that's on the brink of collapse, 1989 be- ing the tail end of an eco- nomic bubble that was soon to burst. It's not that the glamour on display isn't fun to take in. It's just that it reduces the visual and tonal palette into something that Psychological unease looms large over this lush adaptation of an award-winning novel, though Wash Westmoreland's exploration of Western angst in 1989 Tokyo doesn't quite stick the landing Teodor Reljic No flavour to the aftershocks