Sound Of Silence

The often heard expression 'Sometimes silence speaks louder than words', contrary though it seems, is not only true but happens all the time, albeit at times not even consciously done by the people who initiate the silence, and 'words' of that silence are usually responded also with silence. While this is taking place, hundreds or more words would have been spoken. For instance, if your lover gives you the silent treatment, you know he / she is fed up or angry with you, and you could more than likely guess what words that silence represents. I suddenly talk about this subject because I saw Isabel Coixet, the renowned Spanish film director with international fame ( 'My life without me', 'The secret life of words', being interviewed about the film she was shooting in Japan, called 'Mapa de Los sonidos de Tokio' (The map of sounds of Tokyo), written also by her. She defined this picture as 'romantic thriller', well romance always thrills, but I think she meant thriller rather than thrilling. The stars in this film are Sergi Lopez and the Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi, who was nominated for Oscar as the best supporting actress for her roll in 'Babel' as a deaf and dumb girl. The story is about a collector of 'bottled' sounds of different areas of Tokyo, a sound engineer, foreigner in his own country. Apparently there are many sound engineers in Japan, one Isabel Coixet met spends all his working hours collecting all sorts of silence, and had canned already 500 different ones!!! That really intrigues me. How does one know the task in hand is totally different from the last one recorded, when all you hear is, NOTHING? How does he classify and edit his collection when each says NOTHING? And what do you use these for? I got a head load of questions and not a single answer. Anyone here knows anything about it to enlighten me? Back to the film. Sergi's character, the sound collector, is being blamed for the suicide of his girlfriend, daughter of a very powerful business man in Tokyo. So he, the father, hired a assassin to kill him. That's where Rinko Kikuchi comes in, a woman with a double life, a fish seller in the market by day, and sporadic paid assassin by night. Interesting plot, huh? Great part of the scenes were shot in Barcelona. Judging by the director's definition of 'romantic thriller', I could almost guess what might happen: the assassin and the man of her prey will fall in love, and complicates her decision, to love him, or to kill him ... Sometimes it's the same thing! Tags:silence,film,tokyo,assassin

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