Movie Review: One Night in Tokyo

Iranian-American Sam (Reza Emamiyeh) gets off his flight to Tokyo expecting his girlfriend Becca (Cailee Oliver) to be waiting for him at the airport. Alas, she isn’t there and his repeated attempts to reach her by phone go unanswered, so he navigates the city’s transportation system to make it to her address. When she answers the door her reaction to his presence is odd and she offers up a weak excuse for the abandonment as she invites him in. The encounter only gets worse for Sam when she reveals that she wants to break up, which he understandably feels could have been said before he flew across the Pacific. Becca offers him the key to a nearby hotel and the promise of a chat over coffee later in his planned one-week stay, but Sam storms out into the sprawling metropolis.

Not knowing where to go, he calls his longtime friend Jun (Shinichiro Watanabe) who the couple were originally supposed to meet that night for dinner. Jun also seems to have forgotten about Sam and has to work late but offers to have his native Japanese girlfriend Ayaka (Tokiko Kitagawa) take him along for drinks with her friends. Sam is initially reluctant to go, but since he is unable to rebook his flight home for anything earlier than late the following morning, he decides to meet up with her.

Ayaka is initially indifferent towards Sam’s presence, practically losing him on the way to a bar. She and the majority of her friends only speak Japanese, which leaves Sam out of the loop on their conversations, only getting occasional help from one who speaks halting English. As the beers flow however he does loosen up a bit and manages to enjoy himself regardless. At the end of the evening, he walks Ayaka back to Jun’s home where she discovers him with another woman. She storms out, Sam follows, and the two find themselves each trying to console each other despite their language barrier.

Writer and director Joshua Woodcock cleverly deploys technology to help them break it, when Sam remembers that his smartphone can do live translation, which appears on the screen for us to see in lieu of traditional subtitles. It’s a nice touch that then inexplicably but charmingly carries on throughout the rest of the movie even after the phone has been put away. When that switch happens it’s a little off-putting, but as one realizes that the alternative would be to have them staring at their devices for the remainder of the runtime the decision makes sense and even winds up adding a hint of magical whimsy to their developing relationship.

Emamiyeh and Kitagawa have a convincing chemistry with each other, which makes their story easy to buy into. She proves to be a stronger actor than him, but he mostly holds his own on screen with her and it’s hard not to feel your heart melt a little whenever they smile at each other. Alas, the secondary cast is more hit and miss but none of them are usually on screen long enough for it to matter too much. Also handling the cinematography himself, Woodcock proves to have a strong eye for photography, setting up several memorably lovely shots, accentuated by Topher Horn’s unobtrusive but lovely score.

The movie isn’t perfect. The first third can spend a little too long focusing on uneventful travel between points A and B, the story is a little predictable, and as mentioned some of the acting is less than great. But the simple romance at the film’s core proves irresistible. Buoyed by a pair of endearing performances this slow-burn charmer will be firmly planted in your heart by the time the credits roll. Woodcock achieves a lot with a little here and I am eager to see what he does next, though his feature-length debut is already worth seeking out. ★★★½