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FEAR AND TREMBLING Send This Review to a Friend
In French director Alain Corneau’s “Fear and Trembling,” based on the novel by Amélie Nothomb, a Belgian young woman who spent her childhood in Japan returns to the country and takes a corporate job from hell. Hired as a translator, she runs head-on into a workplace culture that is horrendously difficult to survive. I don’t know how accurate the depiction is, but there’s not enough money to make enduring the daily indignities worth the struggle for anyone who can’t stand being dressed down before everyone else, constantly criticized and steadily demoted in retaliation instead of working up the ladder.
Sylvia Testud, understated looking and outwardly calm, portrays Amélie, who is shocked to find what she is up against in the hierarchy that must be strictly observed. Her immediate boss is Fubuki, played by the exquisite Kaori Tsuji, whose beauty awes Amélie. But she soon finds that Fubuki, herself a victim of the system, is a stern taskmaster and contemptuous of her new employee’s Western ways and what she sees as inabilities to do tasks of sheer drudgery, like checking expense accounts.
As an example of her lack of knowledge of what is expected, when relegated to serving tea, Amélie unwittingly makes the mistake of speaking Japanese to those discussing business in the conference room. She is later berated for having invaded business privacy, as those visiting the company no longer feel they can talk in confidence without being overheard by a lowly employee.
Things go from bad to worse, until Amélie is relegated to cleaning toilets, including those in the men’s room, and is even brutally scolded in that capacity. Ultimately, after deciding to leave at the end of her contract, she finds a way to save face by manipulating the very practices that have done her in.
Writer-director Corneau does a careful job of showing the West-East clash of workplace behavior and leads us into pondering differences and wondering whether things are really this bad for those who struggle within a corporate structure in Japan. Both Testud and Tsuji give convincing performances, as do the supporting cast members. “Fear and Trembling” is certainly a very different movie-going experience. A Cinema Guild release.
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