Isabel Coixet is a director I always liked since I saw My Life Without Me (2003)a few years back. Since then I tried to see the rest of her films.
This one just like Elegy (2008), seems to be Coixets attempt at becoming a more mainstream director, a bankable director able to do genre films.
However, Coixet seems very unfamiliar with genrefilmmaking and this film is very flawed, lacks focus and also brings almost nothing new the thriller genre.
Coxiet dramathriller about a Japanese girl who works at the fishmarket and also doubles as an assassin is basically your average story about a lonely assassin doing his/her job without emotion until one day....
Coixet tries to fill this tired, cliché ridden subgenre with filmpoetry, beautiful visuals, odd script and different approach but somewhere leaves the viewer with feeling that she knows almost nothing about this subgenre.
Experimenting with genres, mixing style and content in order to do something new and still stick to genretraditions is one hard thing to do.
Coixet doesn't handle this well, but there are good things to say about Rinko Kikuchis fishmarket girl, Sergi Lópezs wine merchant etc. Coixet has always been good directing actors and once again we get a film full of wonderful performances.
Had Coixet seen Le samouraï (1967), Xich lo/Cyclo (1995), Seom/The Isle (2000)etc we would have probably seen a different film altogether, instead of this flawed film.
However, see this film regardless of what the critics say, it has very nice performances, visuals etc.
And maybe next time Coixet will make a better genrefilm.
