Gen Shimaoka

Six years ago, Yoshido directed La Vie lointaine, the adaptation of the eponymous novel of Haruki. Two days before the end of the shooting, a sudden and strange rise of fever struck the members of the crew causing the film to stop. Today, Yoshido is an old and weakened man. When he leaves the hospital, he knows he only has little time to live. During the night, after a few glasses of saké, he decides to resume the shooting of his unfinished film.

It is a mild winter and Martin has just settled into the isolated house that was his father's. One night, at the edge of the woods, a strange man called Haruki appears before him. He invites Martin to lose himself in the forest in order to encounter a stranger. The stranger comes in the form of Yoshido, a peculiar Japanese filmmaker, who, assisted by Mathilde, is preparing to shoot a film based on Haruki's unfinished novel La Vie lointaine.

Emma meets François at an airport in France. He is an astronomer who studies the phenomenon of black holes, and Emma finds herself immediately taken with him. Their romance flourishes during a stay in the countryside. But one day, François disappears on a bicycle ride. Left alone in a big house, Emma becomes afraid and returns to Paris to continue her life as a real estate agent. Soon after, François' brother Michel contacts her and together they try to solve the mystery of François' disappearance. But when he encounters Emma, Michel begins to transform into a ghost. Emma slowly begins to realize she possesses a frightening power that she was not aware of.

Amélie, a young Belgian woman, having spent her childhood in Japan, decides to return to live there and tries to integrate in the Japanese society. She is determined to be a "real Japanese" before her year contract runs out, though it precisely this determination that is incompatable with Japanese humility. Though she is hired for a choice position as a translator at an import/export firm, her inability to understand Japanese cultural norms results in increasingly humiliating demotions. Though Amelie secretly adulates her, her immediate supervisor takes sadistic pleasure in belittling her all along. She finally manages to break Amelie's will by making her the bathroom attendant, and is delighted when Amelie tells her the she will not renew her contract. Amelie realizes that she is finally a real Japanese when she enters the company president's office "with fear and trembling," which could only be possible because her determination was broken by Miss Fubuki's systematic torture.

Japanese Yan Dedet's Land of the Singing Dog concerns a musicologist, Toyo Mahiru (Gen Shimaoka), and his wife, Yoshiko (Katsuo Nakamura), who travel to a remote French village because Toyo has heard there is a citizen of the village that owns a singing dog. As the childless pair humorously adjust to their new surroundings, they soon spend more time concentrating on conceiving than in searching for the talented canine. The subdued, reflective Land of the Singing Dog was screened as part of the Director's Fortnight at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.