The Japanese Wife

Overall Rating: 3.07/5

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Ratings:3/5 Reviewer:Rajeev Masand Site:IBNLive

Despite its leisurely pace and its wildly implausible premise, The Japanese Wife, directed by Aparna Sen, is a film that stays with you. Adapted from Kunal Basu's short story, Sen's film reaches out and touches your heart because it's populated with believable, flesh-and-blood characters who have real fears and anxieties that you can connect with. There is no denying the fact that The Japanese Wife gets bogged down by its indulgent pace. But stay with it and you will be rewarded. I'm going with three out of five for director Aparna Sen's The Japanese Wife. It's an unusual piece of cinema that lingers in your memory for its luscious visuals and heartbreaking emotions.

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Ratings:3/5 Reviewer:Taran Adarsh Site:BollywoodHungama

This unique story [penned by Kunal Basu] is translated beautifully on celluloid thanks to Aparna Sen's deft handling of the material. Of course, a story like this unwinds at a leisurely pace, but there's no denying that the proceedings keep you engrossed for most parts, mainly towards the penultimate moments. You may watch THE JAPANESE WIFE for varied reasons. But I recommend that you watch it with someone you love. On the whole, THE JAPANESE WIFE is an emotional journey that keeps you hooked for its sheer novel story. A film for connoisseurs of art house cinema mainly!

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Ratings:4/5 Reviewer:Nikhat Kazmi Site:TimesOfIndia

If you really care about aesthetics and have been hungering for something that will satiate your finer sensibilities -- battered by now, by the relentless onslaught of kitsch -- you must grab a dekko at Aparna Sen's artful rendition of Kunal Basu's novel, The Japanese Wife. There is such beauty, restraint and minimalism in this akin-to-a-haiku film, it transports you into another world altogether. One, where love can exist without consummation and togetherness can be attained, despite spatial and cultural distances. Truly, this one's a heady potion from Aparna Sen...can still feel the senses clouding!

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Ratings:3/5 Reviewer:Anupama Chopra Site:NDTV

How much you enjoy Aparna Sen’s The Japanese Wife is directly proportionate to how patient you are.The film is slow to the point of being painful. And yet, if you stay with it, The Japanese Wife is a rewarding experience. It’s rich with yearning and sadness and yet hopeful, in a quiet way. It’s a minimalist rendering of a chaste, almost surreal love. But Sen makes us believe in it because she tells the story with great empathy and affection.The Japanese Wife is an acquired taste. But if you’re the type of viewer who is willing to sacrifice pacing for poignance, I recommend you go for it.

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Ratings:2.5/5 Reviewer:Raja Sen Site:Rediff

And so it is that The Japanese Wife, a wonderfully shot, skilfully acted adaptation of a most affectionate Kunal Basu story, has almost everything in its favour.There are some vividly original moments, and a lot of very pleasant atmospherics. The mood of rural Bengal is captured lovingly by the camera, and thanks to much starkness and use of Japanese background music, the feel of the film is quite impressively like modern emotional cinema from Hong Kong and Korea.As a film, however, it isn't an entirely satisfying experience. I haven't read Basu's story, but from the film it seems too brief and simplistic for a full-length feature, and most of this film passes by with such unhurried lack of necessity that it really doesn't matter if you're looking at the screen or not. It's very pretty, but most of it is unfortunately very pretty wallpaper.

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Ratings:3/5 Reviewer:Khalid Mohammed Site:PassionforCinema

You return home with The Japanese Wife, the ninth feature film directed by Aparna Sen, the 64-year-old Kolkata-rooted actress.  It stays with you. Although the tempo is excruciatingly slow and the screenplay repeats lines of dialogue as if they had been written by a squawking parrot, the result is limned with that near-extinct quality in cinema – humaneness.With all its pros and cons, The Japanese Wife is infinitely superior to the cinema available in the market. Recommended for sure for film connoisseurs.

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Ratings:3/5 Reviewer:Shubhra Gupta Site:IndianExpress

One of Aparna Sen’s best qualities is that she captures the rhythms of the life of her characters so well that you can’t imagine them doing anything else. `The Japanese Wife’s improbable plot, based on a novel of the same name-- a Bengali schoolteacher falling in long-distance love with his Japanese pen pal-- turns into a beguiling romance in Sen’s skillful hands. In it’s most effective parts, the beautifully-lensed `The Japanese Wife’ is like a haiku, saying a lot without underlining too much, a rare thing in our movies.

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