@jasonli nice interacting with you!

@jasonli yes, tough, the filmmakers should have been more careful. Paradoxically, btw, Amelie Nothomb is much liked in Japan where she is seen as an interesting oddity. Also, for reflection, there is another Amelie movie, Amelie Poulain, that uses all possible clichés about France, and was a big hit in Japan. Lots of Japanese come to Paris thinking it will be like the movie :P

@jasonli anyway, the author is interesting, I recommend reading at least one book of hers, maybe the book the movie is based on. Sorry the movie seems bad.

@jasonli sure, she doesn't examine her privilege much in the book, I guess hers is more of a novel, and she leaves the interpretation to the reader. Some will pick up on it, others not, but I see this more as the responsibility of the reader. I don't know what she should do as a novelist, write a preface with warnings to the reader? Insert sociological and political considerations in the text?

@jasonli it is maybe shocking for a white French-speaking kid to claim to be Japanese (wrong skin color?), but that is apparently what Amelie claimed as a kid. She went to a Japanese kindergarten and learned Japanese. Wrote a hilarious but probably, for some, offensive book about her experience in corporate Japan. Again, didn't see the movie, it probably doesn't introduce well the context and perspective. Orientalist, sure, but most Euro-Asian interactions are tinged with prejudice and ignorance

@jasonli i guess Amelie 's book are the childhood memories of an expatriate. Spending one's childhood in a foreign country is an interesting and increasingly common experience, not to be dismissed as invalid in my opinion.