News
Tokyo Fiancée. A Way to Maturity
Media:
Based on Ni d'Ève ni d'Adam, a novel by Amélie Nothomb, the film tells the story of Amélie, a 20-year-old Belgian girl, who wants to be a writer. She returns to Tokyo, the city where she was born, with the goal of facing her past and becoming a real Japanese girl.
Once there, she earns a living by teaching French to a boy who she falls in love. In exchange, he shows her an unknown city that sometimes does not correspond with that one she had imagined. So, she will have to confront the clash of their very different cultures, something that will not be easy.
Tokyo will represent the beginning of her adult life, of her sensuality and loneliness and the place where she buries her childhood dreams, too. When Amélie leaves Japan and returns to Belgium because of the Fukushima disaster, she knows that she has been the protagonist of an intense journey. It has not been only physical but also interior, and it has left on her deep marks.
Tokyo Fiancée is a straightforward and unpretentious story about a girl (Pauline Etienne) who overflows freshness and naturalness. It is a film with parallelisms between the images and the intense emotional contrasts the protagonist faces. That is the way the director has chosen to tell us how much she enjoys both the beautiful cityscapes and the countryside and likes walking around the streets as much as admiring the astonishing and beautiful Mount Fuji.
At certain points, the lack of vitality of the narrative is offset by an aesthetic staging and a charming story with some humorous touches. The film is worth to be watched in the French class, as students can learn from Amelie's classes as her pupil at the story does.
