Stupeur et tremblements (2003)
Directed by Alain Corneau

Film Review

In 1999, Amélie Nothomb published a novel entitled Stupeur et tremblements, an account of her experiences whilst working for a Japanese mega-corporation.  The book was a best seller and won the Grand Prix de l'Académie Française.  Alain Corneau's film version is a faithful adaptation of the novel, making effective use of voiceover to convey Amélie's thoughts, using the writer's own insightful and poetic language.

The part of Amélie is played by Sylvie Testud, with great emotional sensitivity, warmth, humanity, and no shortage of irony.  She is a fairytale heroine in a strange magical land; she is both Wendy from Peter Pan and the Little Match Girl from Hans Christian Andersen.  Testud's persona is so suggestive of a well-motivated Westerner - free thinking, imaginative, likeable - in fact the very opposite of the soulless automaton that would make an ideal Japanese employee.  The cultural divide between East and West is never more apparent than when the guileless Amélie begins work for a company in which submission and obedience is valued above all else.  For this captivating and intelligent performance, Sylvie Testud was rewarded with the Best Actress César in 2004.

Stupeur et tremblements is a film that is both hilarious and original, but it is also pretty shocking.  From a distance, the maltreatment, the endless stream of verbal and physical abuse, the degrading humiliation of a junior employee in a company is irresistibly funny.  The more Amélie's Oriental managers rant and rave, riling against Western values and Western work ethic, the more comical they become, looking increasingly like suit-wearing Sumo wrestlers with frenzied hornets in their underpants.  Yet the more we come to identify with the put upon Amélie, the more abhorrent her ill-treatment appears, so that whilst we may laugh at what we see, there's also a realisation that it's actually a pretty sick laugh.

In the West, such extreme abuse would be unthinkable, and would most likely result in criminal prosecution.  However, anyone who has ever worked for a Western company will be familiar with some of what the film shows us.  Whilst the behaviour of Amélie's Japanese colleagues will appear undoubtedly extreme to a Westerner, there are similarities with the way in which Western folk behave within a company  - protecting one's territory, forming alliances to defeat a common enemy, preventing others from overtaking as one ascends the greasy pole, etc.  Admittedly, the notion of a hierarchical society is probably at its most extreme in Japan (illustrated by the frequent use of the skyscraper motif), but hierarchies exist in other cultures, founded on domination and willing submission. Stupeur et tremblements is as much about universal truths in human nature as it is about office politics or clash of cultures, and it is this which makes it such an appealing and entertaining film.

Film Synopsis

Having completed her studies, a twenty-year old Belgian girl, Amélie, returns to Japan, the country where she spent the first five years of her life.  To get a job as a translator with the mammoth Yumimoto corporation is, for her, the highest honour, and the fulfilment of her adolescent dreams.  However, her Japanese colleagues and managers soon come to regard her as wayward and disruptive.  When she tries to do some real work, using her initiative and imagination, she is given a severe dressing down and ends up as the office dogsbody.  Amélie accepts this humiliation but is upset when she learns that the person who betrayed her was her immediate superior, the beautiful Miss Mori, whom she has come to idolise.  Regarding Amélie as a threat, Miss Mori has no qualms about making her life Hell.  Amélie's love of all things Japanese is about to be tested to the very limit…