As long as there have been journeys to the East, Hollywood has had a fascination for the “Westerner in Japan” story, the most recent being Tom Cruise’s turn in The Last Samurai or Bill Murray’s in Lost in Translation, both in 2003.
Now, it’s the ladies’ turn as Kate Bosworth’s first production project Lost Girls and Love Hotels will be directed by French director Jean-Marc Vallee (The Young Victoria), according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Based on the debut novel of Canadian Catherine Hanrahan, the screenplay by Nadia Conners (The 11th Hour) looks a little like this:
The story centers on a woman (Bosworth) who tries to forget her past while working in Tokyo as an English specialist at a stewardess training institute by day and losing herself in a sex- and drug-addled oblivion by night. She finds herself on the road to redemption when she becomes interested in a missing Western girl.
The article goes on to recount a whole bunch of other stories that are getting Hollywood interest, including the upcoming (and very un-PC-ly titled) debut memoir Japan Took the J.A.P. Out of Me by Lisa Fineberg Cook which got its rights optioned by Chickflicks Productions, Jake Adelstein’s non-fictional Tokyo Vice (perhaps buoyed by Adelstein’s recent appearance on “The Daily Show”), and the “Vertigo Pop! Tokyo” comics miniseries by Jonathan Vankin and Seth Fisher (you can read an article about the miniseries here).
To try and explain the fascination Westerners (and the U.S. in particular) have with Japan might be partially rooted in what happened 68 years and two days ago, when Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor and single-handedly changed that country’s destiny. Who were these people who dared to cross an ocean almost undetected and wreaked so much havoc?
There’s also an entire generation of Americans who have been raised to see Japanese culture as “cool”—particularly its animation and comics—and not only have some of them traveled to Japan to visit, several have lived there as expatriates.
As someone who has not only always wanted to go to Japan but has friends who currently live or have lived there, I hope the movie does justice to the actual experience…but I’m also not holding my breath.
Erin says:
Another Western production of Japan as a sex-and-drug ridden perverse landscape? No thanks. More woman-fish out of water stories about Japan? Read enough.
On the other hand, Tokyo Vice sounds intriguing.
Gordon McAlpin says:
To be fair, I think most Western productions portray America as a sex-and-drug ridden perverse landscape, too.
Erin says:
Another Western production of Japan as a sex-and-drug ridden perverse landscape? No thanks. More woman-fish out of water stories about Japan? Read enough.
On the other hand, Tokyo Vice sounds intriguing.
Gordon McAlpin says:
To be fair, I think most Western productions portray America as a sex-and-drug ridden perverse landscape, too.