Despite being a little rough around the edges, “One Night in Tokyo” marks a delightfully heartwarming feature debut for writer-director Joshua Woodcock. The indie film circumvents the usual trepidations of a low-budget affair, overcoming them through a fairly smooth narration of a familiar yet captivating tale of life’s many possibilities. The film’s defining quality rests in the fleeting moments it manages to illustrate. These moments, containing heartbreak, acceptance, and new-found joy, celebrate the experience that is life. All of this happens on a vivid night in Tokyo.
Sam (Reza Emamiyeh) arrives in Tokyo for a week-long vacation with his Tokyo-residing expat girlfriend, Becca (Cailee Oliver). But the journey does not begin well as she does not come to meet him at the airport. When Sam finally reaches Becca’s house, the predictable inevitability of a break-up greets him. Becca is on her own path now and she does not feel Sam could be the companion for that. The couple was set for a dinner with their Japanese friend, Jun (Shinichiro Watanabe). However, an enraged and hurt Sam leaves Becca’s apartment. In a call, Jun informs Sam that he will send his girlfriend, Ayaka (Tokiko Kitagawa) to take Sam for a night out.
Ayaka, not knowing any English, takes Sam to a local pub where she is supposed to have a drink with her friends. The group does not make Sam feel particularly welcome as the language barrier keeps Sam at bay in the more animated conversations, despite one of Ayaka’s friends’ attempts to translate the conversation using his broken English. The encounter highlights the absurdness of the situation Sam finds himself in. On the night his relationship ends, he immediately finds himself at a table of strangers without having any idea of what is going on.
Woodcock’s script spends significant time in this awkward drinking scene, in a very Hong Sang-soo manner. This encounter represents Sam’s alienation in a foreign city as the life he knows starts to crumble. It is no wonder Sam wants to board the next plane home, to go back to familiarity. But, as his unfamiliar companion Ayaka starts to let Sam in, the city of Tokyo also starts to seem more welcoming and more familiar. There is nothing more universal than two humans empathizing with each other while going through the same journey. In their bid to make it work, Sam and Ayaka find that they have more in common than their language gap has allowed them to fathom.
The film grows on you as the lead characters start to warm up to each other. Of course, finding Jun and Becca shacking up together gives the pair a shocking commonality. It was not particularly unexpected, but Woodcock handles the betrayal with mature subtlety. Ayaka does not immediately realize that Jun is with Becca, who is Sam’s girlfriend. It is not until she shares a couple of ‘bottoms-up’ drinks with him, does Ayaka understands that Sam is going through the same thing.
A particularly crafty facet in the script is how “One Night in Tokyo” handles the socio-linguistic gap. There is a smooth transition from Sam and Becca not being able to understand each other due to the language barrier to having conversations where Sam answers in English while Ayaka ruminates in Japanese without one being oblivious to the other. This happens via translation software in Sam’s phone, but Woodcock slowly takes the technology away and leaves us with two strangers conversing in the most natural way possible; where feelings take over words.
As an independent film, “One Night in Tokyo” has an appearance of non-actors trying their hands, especially in the supporting cast. However, the pair Reza Emamiyeh and Tokiko Kitagawa reflect a natural chemistry that makes the journey of Sam and Ayaka more authentic than ever. The performance of the lead pair brushes over any inadequacies one might find in the film. The poignantly melancholic notes by music composer Topher Horn viably accentuate the tone of the film.
“One Night in Tokyo” bears striking similarities with films like “Lost in Translation,” and “Before Sunrise.” The central arc of the story where two strangers spend the night walking, conversing, and absorbing a city night is particularly similar to Richard Linklater’s first film in his “Before” series. However, just as Vienna and Tokyo are not the same, Joshua Woodcock has enough authenticity in his story of Sam and Ayaka to not make them feel like an extension of Jesse and Celine. And if the film reminds you of “Before Sunrise,” I can only say that it is a good thing.
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