When it comes to making sense, 'Fear and Trembling' strikes out
Director Alain Corneau's ''Fear and Trembling" is an office comedy that plays as a culture-clash farce, with a whiff of sadomasochism. It centers on Amelie (French actress Sylvie Testud), a demure Belgian who relishes slaving away for a Japanese conglomerate. One of her assignments requires her to spend hours making thousands of photocopies for a boss who's trying to punish her for her ''odious pragmatism."
Like Steven Shainberg's movie ''Secretary" or Pauline Reage's ''Story of O," part of the pleasure of watching this woman march from her commander's office to the copy machine should come from knowing that both the dominator and the dominated get a kick out of the relationship. But the film is more ambiguous about its characters' desire than it needs to be, especially about Amelie's.
In the film, which is based on the autobiographical novel by Amelie Nothomb, our heroine says she's wanted to be Japanese her whole life. When she scores a job as a translator for the Yumimoto Corporation, it seems like a dream come true. But that cruel boss, Mr. Saito (the hilarious Taro Suwa), upbraids her for actually doing her job: Speaking Japanese in front of clients is a no-no. Her interpreting responsibilities are voided and replaced with administrative tasks such as organizing the company calendar and delivering customized orders of tea to the staff.
The lower Amelie descends on the corporate ladder, the less mousy and more interesting she becomes as a character. Her unveiling of the calendars to the workers is a wacky spectacle that leaves them cheering ''Banzai!" But she's also frequently denounced for having no dignity. This seems to be corroborated when she's discovered in the office the morning after having been assigned a particularly difficult and pointless task. Staying late, she ends up ripping off her clothes in frustration and covering herself with the contents of a wastepaper basket.
The movie's mounting absurdity is almost brilliant in its resonance: The S&M relationship is not just between Amelie and Mr. Saito, it's also between her and most of the office. Even Fubuki (Kaori Tsuji), the lady boss on whom Amelie has a crush, gets in on the act, saddling her with torturous assignments at which she's bound to fail. But the film is too tonally patchy to keep pace with its ideas of submission and domination.
For one thing, as wonderful as Testud is, her character doesn't make much sense. Amelie is both a Japanophile and fluent in the language, yet she seems ignorant of the customs. Without giving her some kind of standardized test, it's impossible to tell whether she's conniving, intelligent, or dumb. But she loves her adopted nation unconditionally.
Corneau, whose resume includes 1991's ''All the Mornings of the World," has a simplistic interest in Japanese culture. It's unclear whether the Japanese characters in his movie even understand the rules of corporate Japan -- Amelie's one ally comes to her defense at the risk of his own credibility. Of course, it could have been worse: a shot of a kabuki figure during the opening sequence hints at a fetish that thankfully goes undeveloped. Better choices are made with the soundtrack, which gives us Bach's ''Goldberg Variations," a hypnotically (and appropriately) pedantic piece of music.
''Fear and Trembling" boils down to a reference made to Nagisa Oshima's admittedly bonkers 1983 World War II drama, ''Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence," in which a Japanese military commander (played by the great composer Ryuichi Sakamoto) tortures a British prisoner (pop star David Bowie). Fubuki's review of Oshima's film is a concise and not inaccurate comment on Corneau's: ''The music is good, but the story makes no sense."
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com. 
