"Grüße aus Fukushima" or "Greetings from Fukushima" is a German film from this year written and directed by Doris Dörrie. Lets start with her. She is an incredibly experienced German filmmaker and I have seen and liked many of her works. She also made films in the past about culture clash between Germany and Asia, such as "Kirschblüten - Hanami" or "Erleuchtung garantiert". I liked these two. As a consequence, I was positive I would like her newest work too. Man I was wrong. This film here was such as disappointment. It starts off pretty bad already and becomes worse and worse the longer it runs for its 105 minutes. The film is mostly in English as the German main character does not speak Japanese and the Japanese main character does not speak German. The film is in black-and-white. I am not too big on this creative decision as it does not do a whole lot in the context of the film. The only connection I can somehow make is that the profession of geisha is very ancient already, but the film plays in the now after the Fukushima catastrophe.
Lets continue with lead actress Rosalie Thomass. In my opinion, she turns more and more into a German Jennifer Lawrence and coming from me, this is not a positive statement. Both actresses are considered attractive by some, which I do not agree with, even if Thomass looks still better than Lawrence, but both actresses have absolutely zero talent when it comes to subtlety and not much more in terms of acting in general. It isn't helping when they try to convince us how beautiful Thomass is if she constantly sticks her butt into the camera or if the old Japanese woman says she is kinda cute. Thomass' crying scenes were so disastrous and like I wrote she did not manage to portray subtlety on a single occasion here. This is indeed a major problem as the film completely relies on an actress who can deliver in that area with all the plot references to finding harmony. It's a deal breaker in the negative sense.
Another major problem here is Dörrie's script. There were very few good moments, far from enough for this runtime. It is tough to decide what the worst moments were. I mentioned the crying scenes earlier, but these sucked due to Thomass and not Dörrie. But what did suck were all the parts about the ghosts in front of the house. The script is so bad, it does not even manage to make ghosts look supernatural. And if two people see the same ghost at the same location at the same time, it is not a ghost. It is nothing supernatural, but probably a bunch of teens playing pranks. But of course, all this doesn't matter here. They were ghosts because Dörrie told us so, no matter how stupid the entire scenario was. Other extremely cringeworthy moments were the whole cat references and the meowing. These were laughably bad and it was so painful to watch how they were trying to make interesting and relevant references in the metaphoric sense, but it went so so wrong. And there is a lot more, which I luckily managed to forget already. The only thing worse in terms of the script could have been if Thomass had become the new geisha with the old one dying. Also the situational comedy went very wrong on almost all occasions.
The only somewhat positive statement I can make here is about Kaori Momoi, who elevated the extremely weak material on some occasions. I have no idea what Dörrie did here. Maybe it is true that she can do better with character studies on males than females and she did so successfully in the films I already mentioned and also in "Männer", her possibly most known work. But I actually also liked her work in "Die Friseuse" from a couple years ago, but then again the lead actress there was 10 times better than Thomass here. "Grüße aus Fukushima" is an embarrassment and has nothing on the likes of "Lost in Translation", "Karate Kid" and "Okuribito" that possibly may have inspired Dörrie here. I really hope she does better with her next project again. Finally, a note on the very ending, the statement against nuclear power, oh well... they are good, but they feel also so much fake as the film really apart from two or three minor references does not elaborate on that subject at all, so it felt really fake to include these shots as the last thing we see. I urge you to stay far far away from "Grüße aus Fukushima". The Berlin Film Festival should be ashamed for the awards attention it gave to this garbage movie. Major thumbs-down.
Lets continue with lead actress Rosalie Thomass. In my opinion, she turns more and more into a German Jennifer Lawrence and coming from me, this is not a positive statement. Both actresses are considered attractive by some, which I do not agree with, even if Thomass looks still better than Lawrence, but both actresses have absolutely zero talent when it comes to subtlety and not much more in terms of acting in general. It isn't helping when they try to convince us how beautiful Thomass is if she constantly sticks her butt into the camera or if the old Japanese woman says she is kinda cute. Thomass' crying scenes were so disastrous and like I wrote she did not manage to portray subtlety on a single occasion here. This is indeed a major problem as the film completely relies on an actress who can deliver in that area with all the plot references to finding harmony. It's a deal breaker in the negative sense.
Another major problem here is Dörrie's script. There were very few good moments, far from enough for this runtime. It is tough to decide what the worst moments were. I mentioned the crying scenes earlier, but these sucked due to Thomass and not Dörrie. But what did suck were all the parts about the ghosts in front of the house. The script is so bad, it does not even manage to make ghosts look supernatural. And if two people see the same ghost at the same location at the same time, it is not a ghost. It is nothing supernatural, but probably a bunch of teens playing pranks. But of course, all this doesn't matter here. They were ghosts because Dörrie told us so, no matter how stupid the entire scenario was. Other extremely cringeworthy moments were the whole cat references and the meowing. These were laughably bad and it was so painful to watch how they were trying to make interesting and relevant references in the metaphoric sense, but it went so so wrong. And there is a lot more, which I luckily managed to forget already. The only thing worse in terms of the script could have been if Thomass had become the new geisha with the old one dying. Also the situational comedy went very wrong on almost all occasions.
The only somewhat positive statement I can make here is about Kaori Momoi, who elevated the extremely weak material on some occasions. I have no idea what Dörrie did here. Maybe it is true that she can do better with character studies on males than females and she did so successfully in the films I already mentioned and also in "Männer", her possibly most known work. But I actually also liked her work in "Die Friseuse" from a couple years ago, but then again the lead actress there was 10 times better than Thomass here. "Grüße aus Fukushima" is an embarrassment and has nothing on the likes of "Lost in Translation", "Karate Kid" and "Okuribito" that possibly may have inspired Dörrie here. I really hope she does better with her next project again. Finally, a note on the very ending, the statement against nuclear power, oh well... they are good, but they feel also so much fake as the film really apart from two or three minor references does not elaborate on that subject at all, so it felt really fake to include these shots as the last thing we see. I urge you to stay far far away from "Grüße aus Fukushima". The Berlin Film Festival should be ashamed for the awards attention it gave to this garbage movie. Major thumbs-down.