Silk (2007)

It’s set in France in the 1800s, when Japan was, to Europeans, a closed and forbidden society. Michael Pitt is Herve’ Joncour, who goes on a business trip to Japan to get silkworm eggs, leaving wife Helene behind.

It’s a long, grueling trip that takes months, and at the end he meets a beguiling woman, known only as “the girl,” who just happens to belong to the local warlord. She comes on to him in a very genteel way. During the tea ceremony, she takes his cup and turns it around so her lips will touch the side so recently touched by his lips, and drinks from it.

On a second trip to Japan, he finds “the girl” bathing in the hot springs with her owner, and leaves his glove on her pile of clothing as a token. Another expatriate tells Herve’ that the object of his desire is rumored not to be Japanese, a bit of information that doesn’t seem to have a darn thing to do with the plot, such as it is.

I may be the only viewer of this movie who realizes it, but Herve’ does not make it with “the girl”. The Oriental beauty with whom he is obsessed is the one in the blue kimono. In a wordless little ceremony, she presents to him a different woman, the one in the yellow kimono. Why? Maybe her master told her to do it, to slake the foreigner’s lust and get his mind off the main concubine. Or maybe it’s her own idea. The price she would pay for seducing Herve’ would be too high – like probably her life – but she wants to give him some satisfaction, so he can close his eyes and pretend it’s her, or something. “The girl” gives him the woman in yellow to play with, then sits around in another room looking profoundly unhappy about it. I don’t know what transpired in the novel the movie was based on, but on film, Herve’ and “the girl” don’t make a carnal connection.

The sex is very lovely and romantic, oh yeah, and if I wanted to fantasize about how they do it in Japan, better this than In the Realm of the Senses with all the strangling. Of course, Japan is probably just like anywhere else – some do it one way, and others do it other ways.

Herve’ goes home again, and although he and his wife Helene want to have a child, we are shown a sexual transaction that is utilitarian on his part, and irritating to her. Word comes of chaos in Japan, and Herve’s business partner wants him to go somewhere else instead, like maybe China, for the next shipment of silkworm eggs. But Herve’ is a man with a mission. Another long and difficult journey back to Japan, and he finds the village in smoking ruins. “This time it really was the end of the world.”

He brings back eggs but they die, and everyone in town is going broke, so he hires them to build the formal garden his wife Helene has always dreamed of. Then he gets a long letter, ostensibly from Japan. Helene dies. He goes to see the brothel keeper, a Japanese woman who usually does his translation for him, and it turns out to be a lyrical love letter. But – it was the madam who wrote the letter, taking dictation from none other than Helene. Who is now dead, so Herve’ must suffer remorse over disregarding her great love. This really rings false. In that time and that society, how would a classy lady like Helene, a teacher with a rich husband, even be acquainted with the proprietor of a whorehouse? Wouldn’t happen.

Then we’ve got gorgeous shots of Helene lolling about in the ocean – just like Ted and Venus and a hundred other movies. Fooey.