103 mins/1997

    Milk stands for the westernisation of Japan; it was the West that introduced dairy products into Japan. What happens when green tea meets milk?

    The scene is set in Tokyo, the most cosmopolitan and modern city in the world, with a sometimes-forgotten ancient history. Rika, a young Japanese woman, searches for an identity of her own in a culturally-confused city and becomes an elevator girl where her choices are reduced to going ‘up’ and ‘down’. Simon, a quirky Austrian artist, seeks solace at a 300-year-old grave in old Tokyo, entertaining a fantasy of the courtesan who is buried there. Helen, an assertive American radio announcer who has studied Japanese, vainly tries to understand her environment by intellectualising everything. The Jogger, a fast track bank employee, loses his job and, in order to hide this fact from his family, spends his working hours jogging around town... Does internationalisation somehow make us exiles wherever we may be?

Credits:-

Directed by Edgar Honetschlager

Cast:

Yukika Kudo (Rika), Serge Pinkus (Simon), Sherri Weiner (Helen), Hideki Oshio (Tashairo)

    Edgar Honetschlaeger, 35, was born in Austria, lived for three years in New York and then moved to Tokyo in 1992. He has been holding art exhibitions, doing performance projects and film work in Japan, Europe and the US. His films include Mary Rosenberg (1991) and Sequences (1992).