French director Alaine Corneau's new film tells the story of a young Belgian woman named Amélie (Testud), who was born in Japan and returns as an adult to take a job as an interpreter for the huge Yumimoto Corporation.
She hopes to reconnect with the land of her dreams, but instead poor Amélie descends several circles of corporate hell, finding herself demoted from translator to bathroom cleaner, her every gesture of initiative or compassion misinterpreted by her brutally hierarchical Japanese bosses and co-workers.
Thanks to Testud's endearingly wide-eyed performance, Fear and Trembling plays as an amusing comedy of office mis-manners. Better still is its exploration of the tender and bitter relationship between Amélie and her female boss, the regal and cool Fubuki (Kaori Tsuji).
Like Lost In Translation, the movie treats us to the ways in which a bewildered Westerner tries to comprehend modern-day Japan. The characters in Sofia Coppola's film viewed their hotel as an air lock from which they could make tentative forays into the Otherness of Tokyo. Here, Amélie gazes out the window of her high-rise and imagines she's floating over the city, trembling to find a way out.