Isabelle Huppert funny and moving in a salutary stroll in the land of ghosts

Its temples, its gardens, its gastronomy, its customs and its ghosts… Sidonie, a French novelist played by the delightful Isabelle Huppert, discovers the subtleties of the land of the rising Sun in the footsteps of her Japanese publisher.

For her third feature film, director Elise Girard offers Isabelle Huppert at the top in a half-tragic, half-comic role in a story of mourning, ghosts and a love that blossoms at the other end of the planet. Sidonia in Japan releases in theaters on April 4, 2024.

Sidonie Perceval (Isabelle Huppert), a successful writer lacking inspiration since the accidental death of her husband, goes to Japan at the invitation of her Japanese publisher, on the occasion of the reissue of her first novel, a best -seller. This trip, which she hesitates to make until the last minute, will prove profitable.

Sidonie discovers Japan with Kenzo Mizoguchi (Tsuyoshi Ihara) her editor, who expertly explains to her in perfect French recited in a robot voice the subtleties of his country. We don’t bow down to certain people, we don’t look a man we don’t know in the eyes, we don’t talk about our feelings, and “we don’t talk about making love, we do it”. Sidonie trotting behind her guide, complies with these conventions and takes pleasure in discovering the beauty of temples, prints, gardens, traditional architecture…

In the land of ghosts

Sidonie Perceval has a past marked by repeated tragedies. “Writing is what remains when you find yourself with nothing”, declared the novelist to Japanese journalists who questioned her about her work. Haunted by the death of those close to her, writing served her not to “heal”but “to survive”she explains to them.

The land of ghosts offers her the opportunity to see her husband Antoine again (August Diehl), who unexpectedly invites himself into his journey. The ghost (lit as in the theater, embedded in the image), initially worries Sidonie. But the two spouses end up saying to each other what they could not say to each other because of Antoine’s brutal death. Thus Sidonie finally manages to free her husband from the in-between space in which his grief has locked him, and to free himself from his own ghosts.

We witness a double movement of Sidonie detaching herself from her deceased husband at the same time as she is getting closer to Kenzo (with the complicity of the ghost). A movement that the staging accompanies in an almost choreographic way, with the music of Bach, especially on the piano, omnipresent, like one more character.

The director develops this idea through repeated situations, such as that of the two protagonists in the car against a backdrop of passing landscapes, always each seated on the same side, at a respectable distance, getting a little closer each day, until inversion of places, as a metaphor for the transgression of conventions and rites, so prevalent in Japan, that budding love shatters.

Things move imperceptibly over time, until this love scene, truly very beautiful and sensual, between two hands, until then wisely placed side by side on the back seat of the taxi which takes Sidonie and Kenzo through the landscapes of the archipelago. Thus these two beings at the antipodes find themselves, meet, on the common ground of their intimate stories, haunted by mourning.

“I feel changed”

The film is served by a staging rich in ideas and careful, with frames and colors which form paintings that are sometimes funny like drawings by Sempé, sometimes balanced and soothing like prints. Isabelle Huppert composes with her entire body and her keen sense of silence this atypical character, both tragic and comic, playing her part in perfect synchronization with her Japanese partner.

Through Sidonie’s eyes, the director has fun and amuses us with the clash of cultures, playing with the clichés traditionally associated with Japan: cherry blossoms, gastronomy, fine prints and polished gardens, the thousand codifications that govern human relationships, between bows, hierarchies in gazes and interpersonal distances to be respected.

“Everything is strange. I feel changed. All this newness upsets me“, says Sidonie to Kenzo. Between highly written dialogues, minimalist staging and a Rohmerian title, this third feature film by Elise Girard has the false air of New Wave. Full of humor and tenderness, it accurately evokes a country with unique customs, while offering a reflection on mourning and on encounters, often in strange and unknown lands.

The sheet

Gender : Drama
Director: Elise Girard
Actors: Isabelle Huppert, Tsuyoshi Ihara, August Diehl
Country : France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland
Duration : 1h35 min
Exit : April 3, 2024
Distributer : Art House

Synopsis :
Sidonie goes to Japan for the release of her best-seller. Despite the dedication of her Japanese publisher with whom she discovers the country’s traditions, she gradually loses her bearings… Especially when she comes face to face with her husband, who has been missing for several years!