When I put together a list of movies I wanted to watch during my not-quite-week off which corresponded weirdly with the CineJoy film festival this year, One Night in Tokyo was at the top of my list. Not only was it one of the Spotlight films of the festival. It looks like a fun little romcom set in one of the most wild cities in the world. So Bestie and I chose this as our first to set the tone for what was to be a fruitful week of CineJoy films. Bestie maintains this is one of her favorite films (ever?), but I think she’s just thirsty for the extreme cringe and unintentional laugh lines that pervade this film.
One Night in Tokyo is less a movie and more a loose collection of scenes of Reza Emamiyeh looking puzzled while walking through various transit centers, punctuated approximately every four to eight minutes with an unhelpful title card which gives you the exact time to the minute of the evening, because the thing you want to know more than anything during a movie is “What time is it?”
On translation. There’s this cute little game that the movie plays pretty early on in which the two main characters (“Kitagawa is trying so hard to not seem like the protagonist right now even though she’s wearing that red blazer”) communicate with each other exclusively through Google Translate, but the bit falls away when it’s no longer visually possible for them to stare into a phone screen, so you end up having all of these scenes in the second half of the movie, where the two of them are talking in rapid fire succession while their phones are safely inside their pockets. In some ways, it was better in the first act, when Kitagawa begrudgingly brings Emamiyeh to a social gathering to be the third wheel, while a well-meaning friend haltingly translates the jokes for him.
One of the things I like about Japanese movies in general is how much time and care is devoted to the preparation and eating of food, I told Bestie as we were obviously navigating our way toward some juicy restaurant scenes for the two characters to dine upon before their flirtation turned into a sexy love fest in Emamiyeh’s hotel room during his ONE NIGHT IN TOKYO, but the only food in this movie is not even Japanese and we don’t really even get to watch them eat it.
There’s all sorts of cringey unintentional elements to the film. There are some strange casting choices in this movie. Almost ever couple we meet in Tokyo is composed of a biracial pairing with one long-haired white person and a Japanese woman, as if the city is populated with foreigners using Tokyo as a means of finding themselves through their love of traditional Japanese music or soap opera. Emamiyeh’s “itinerary” is formatted in such a way that it looks almost corporate? Or like a wedding invitation, maybe? So it’s weird when you figure out the slip of paper he keeps staring at is actually something he’s written to himself. There’s a scene which gives us the visual for the poster in which the two lovers find themselves in an abandoned bar late at night on a weekend, which seems strange, but not as weird as the fact that no one has given the bartender any direction, so she ends up sort of standing awkwardly close to the only two people at the bar, staring into the middle distance while they talk through their feelings of star-crossed love. Sam’s relationship with his “girlfriend” feels very much like they were consciously on a break or maybe even in an open relationship, so it doesn’t really land that he’s so devastated when she wants to break up with him during his visit.
Probably the best, most lasting contribution to this movie is the way that Kitagawa, who at all times is out-acting her costar and doing some brilliant work, calls him a “baby boy” and taunts him with a crying gesture. I cannot imagine a more awkward romcom for you to see about Japan than this One Night in Tokyo.
Honestly On The Sly 