MAP OF THE SOUNDS OF TOKYO

Last Saturday I watched the film “Map of the Sounds of Tokyo” directed by Isabel Coixet.

I usually like this director’s films and this is one of her best works.

Although sounds are very important in this film, this is a movie about feelings and silences. This is about words never said. I remember the first film by Coixet which I watched some years ago: Things I Never Told You.

When you are a young person, you think everything is very important. Both what you do and what you don’t do is very important. When you are young, you live as if you only had one life. But you have to die very soon to live only one life. People usually live several lives. David, one of the main characters, lives three lives during this film.

When you get older you add new lives, new rooms in your mind. Some of these lives are longer than others; some of them are more reminded.

When you look back since your old age, to what of these lives will call “my life”? Who will have been more important for you?

Maybe, as the killer girl in the film, all of us should have a job which makes us not to think. All of us have graves to clean on Sunday.

This film is on general release in Spain but I don´t know if it is available in the USA or in other countries.

In short, this film is about a strange girl who has two jobs. Thanks one of them she makes money, the other one gives her peace. On the other side, the plot talked about a rich man, an important chairman, who has lost his only daughter. She has killed herself. Finally, the nexus between these two stories is David. He was the boyfriend of the dead daughter and he meets the strange girl.

For the final scene, Coixet has chosen a perfect song. This song is included in the last CD of Antony and the Johnsons: “One Dove”.

While I stayed on after the film to read the credits, I still heard in my mind this amazing song.