Many foreigners, from visitors to longtime expats, have made films in Japan, but nearly all of them have ended up distinctly non-Japanese. That's not to say they were bad: Josef von Sternberg's erotic fable "Anatahan" (1953) was unlike anything Japan's film industry was making at the time, but it still has a strange, dreamlike power.
John Williams, however, makes films that do not exoticize Japan. His first feature, "Firefly Dreams" (2001), had an Ozu-esque flavor of themes implied rather than stated, of drama unfolding naturally. I would have guessed the director to be a 50-ish Japanese veteran, not a 30-something Welshman.
Now Williams is back with "Starfish Hotel," an essay in erotic noir very different in treatment and style. If Williams is channeling any director this time, it's David Lynch. The surrealistic fiction of Haruki Murakami also comes to mind, though Williams' script is an original. The first time I saw the film, more than a year ago, I didn't catch its many transitions from reality to dream and back again. On a second viewing, I was still baffled, but I was more understanding of Williams' vision. He blurs the divides between not only waking and dreaming but past and present, human and inhuman, colorless office spaces of corporate Japan and old buildings that look haunted even in broad daylight.