Como esto probablemente desaparecerá para mañana en el foro donde lo escribí...

If they wanted to, japanese people could have grounds to feel offended by this movie. From their point of view, the film could've just been called "LOL JAPAN". It draws its strength from the bond foreigners make by saying "these japanese are so wacky, compared to us normal folk". It isn't a movie interested in understanding the more alien elements of japanese culture, and instead takes its weirdness as a given.

I found this approach very smug of Coppola. For me it's pretty clear that to make her point she has no qualms about presenting Japan in a bigoted way, even if it's a passive one at that.

To be fair, there'd be no movie if Coppola tried to understand the culture instead of just being weirded out by it. We're not talking about stereotypes, we're talking about ideosyncrasies. There are how's and why's to stuff like the loud talk show, the food, the use of dozens of words to convey simple concepts, the "rape fantasy" call girl. Yet most of the comedy derives form the frustrated face of Murray, who never says it but is probably thinking: "the FUCK is wrong with you people?"

Of course, the movie is hailed as an accurate depiction of foreigners bonding in a strange land just by the fact that they're foreigners. That this is a real phenomenon, I have no doubts about it. There's fear towards an alien way of living, and as such a chance to hang around familiar ways of thinking will always be embraced. The story values this bond over reaching out and understanding, though, which serves its dramatic purposes, but I found it annoyingly petty.

In fact, there's pettiness all around the movie, like it being a royal "fuck you" to Spike Jonze. If Scarlett's character is an accurate portraying of Sofia Coppola herself in the same situation, then she's lashing out at his husband for being a busy, talented guy while she got bored for not having a succesful trade of her own: fucking deal, woman.

Oh, and as for the japanese being the most racist people in the world, and thus deserving it: two wrongs hardly make one right.