A 13-minute fever dream where karaoke becomes a love language nobody speaks.
An American girl's beautiful song in a lonely New York karaoke bar catches the attention of an ultra-hip Japanese boy. Convinced she is his dream come true, he attempts to win her over despite his lack of English.
Acting
Mary Timony's deadpan vs. Matsuura's desperate earnestness.
Sound
Her actual voice—Helium's indie rock legend doing karaoke.
Direction
Vapnek crams a feature's worth of longing into 13 minutes.
Director
Brett Vapnek
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made in 2001, this predates Lost in Translation by two years—Sofia Coppola's film gets all the credit for this specific lonely-American-in-Tokyo energy, but Vapnek was here first with a fraction of the budget.
Mary Timony was frontwoman of Helium and later Wild Flag—she's not acting, that's genuinely her musicianship and awkwardness on screen. The karaoke performance is unscripted.
US
