Film Review: The Japanese Wife

I just got back from watching ‘The Japanese Wife‘ (starring Rahul Bose, Chigusa Takaku, Moushumi Chatterjee, Raima Sen) and hate to be a party pooper but am slightly disappointed with how the story was handled. For a concept this unique and a setting this surreal, I was expecting more depth in the characters and story.

It didn’t help that the subtitling was awfully incomplete during most exchanges in Bengali. Imagine being able to understand only the first half of the sentences uttered by the protagonists because there were no subtitles for the remaining half. In my book, this is a serious technical glitch that could badly affect how people who do not speak Bengali perceive the film. I hope whoever is responsible for it, has it fixed soon. I’m going to be looking forward to a properly subtitled DVD so that I can watch the entire film without wishing I had a translator app for my mind.

The film is about a shy Bengali man called Snehamoy, who writes letters to a female pen-pal in Japan called Miyage, who is just as shy as him if not more. Over time, they both find themselves communicating more freely with each other than they ever have with the people around them and this blossoms into their version of love across borders and cultures. Soon, Miyage asks Snehamoy to accept her as his wife; without ever having met or even spoken to him. After much introspection, he accepts and thus begins the story of The Japanese Wife.

To make the plot interesting, a second woman is introduced to test the boundaries of Snehamoy’s comfort zone. Sandhya, the same girl that Snehamoy’s mashi (maternal aunt) wanted him to marry before Miyage popped the question, now comes to live with them as a young widow with her son, Paltu, in tow. While Snehamoy and Paltu start bonding over Japanese kites and a familiar father-son like relationship emerges, his interaction with the mother is relegated to cursory glances at best. He even writes to Miyage that he doesn’t know what her face looks like or if she has shaved her head or not because of this. Gradually, both Snehamoy and Sandhya let their guards down and get to know each other better while Snehamoy is still as devoted a husband to Miyage as ever.

The trouble with this sort of arrangement of events is that none of the three different relationships between Snehamoy and Miyage; Snehamoy and Paltu; and Snehamoy and Sandhya are fully explored, leaving you with just bits and pieces of each to chew on. At the end of the film, you are left wondering who/what the film was really about. Was the story really about everlasting love? Or was it little more than a poignant tale of one man, two women and the circumstances that bind them all together?

That said, you must watch ‘The Japanese Wife’ for Rahul Bose’s portrayal of a Bengali man from the village whose struggles with the English language often result in bhery funny scenes, accent and all. Moushumi Chatterjee plays the perfect mother figure to Snehamoy complete with taunts and jibes over her incomprehension of his marriage to an absentee Japanese wife, while even with barely a mouthful of dialogues, Raima Sen manages to take your breath away with her silent, soulful expressions.

Visually, the film is a feast for the eyes. One can almost smell the air of the Sunderbans and get a feel for the languid pace of rural life there by just looking at the visuals on-screen. It’s almost poetic.

Overall, I would rate The Japanese Wife a 3.5/5.

Films like these can really inspire the film-maker hidden in every one of us! I, too, want to write a story for the big screen some day.