In my books, Isabel Coixet is a ‘hit or miss’ type director. I’ve been confounded by a pattern where I find myself touched by a portrait (always a female protagonist in some kind of unique of relationship where there is a dilemma) and then the following portrayal I find myself far from being seduced. Elegy was probably her biggest commercial success, but there are chances that Map of the Sounds of Tokyo might be just as popular because of the Femme Nikita character type. My wingman/fellow colleague for the Cannes Film Festival Alex Billington (from Firstshowing.net) got a hold of an ominous, Euro-approved erotically-charged trailer featuring signature style god’s point of view shots that Coixet likes to employ and some racy foundling between Rinko Kikuchi and Sergi López. A curious note: of the entire Cannes competition, Coixet is the sole person to have not presented at the festival before.
this is about a Japanese-set dramatic thriller that centers on a solitary young Japanese woman who works in a fish market at night and occasionally as a hired killer. She’s contracted to assassinate a Spanish man, who’s blamed for the suicide of a rich businessman’s daughter. Meanwhile, a sound engineer, who’s fascinated by the woman and the sounds of Tokyo, tracks the girl through the city.
