MERGING movie cultures

THAI-JAPANESE RELATIONS are touched on in three entries in this year’s Japanese Film Festival, opening tonight at Bangkok’s Paragon Cineplex.
The curtain-raiser, “Lupin III”, was actually shot here, and features a handful of local talents alongside Japanese stars. Other Thai connections are explored in the migrant-worker drama “Saudade”, and there’s a quirky intersection of indie talent from the two countries in the brand-new romantic comedy “Hand in the Glove”.
Under the theme of “Life”, the Japanese Film Festival has 15 entries in all, running until February 8 at Paragon and then at Chiang Mai’s Central Festival from February 13.
“Lupin III” is a live-action update of the popular manga and anime franchise created by Kazuhiko Kato, an artist and writer better known as Monkey Punch.
Ryuhei Kitamura, an action-movie veteran known for his stylish martial-arts dramas “Versus” and “Azuki”, as well as Hollywood horror with “The Midnight Meat Train” and “No One Lives”, takes the helm of “Lupin III”.
Shun Ogiri stars as the cocky and self-assured master thief Arsene Lupin III, taking up the character’s iconic red jacket and Walther P-38 handgun.
Other stars in the reboot include cult-actor Tadanobu Asano as Lupin’s arch-nemesis, the trenchcoat-clad police inspector Koichi Zenigata.
Partly filmed in Thailand in 2013, “Lupin III” boasts Thai stage and screen veteran Nirut Sirichanya as the main villain, an underworld tycoon in a “fictional Southeast Asian country” who battles Lupin for possession of the priceless jewel, the Crimson Heart of Cleopatra. Other local talents include Thanayong Wongtrakul and Rhatha “Yaya Ying” Pho-ngam.
Kitamura will be present for tonight’s gala premiere at Paragon Cineplex. It’s an invitation-only affair, but don’t worry – “Lupin III” screens again next Saturday.
The fest gets underway in earnest at 11am tomorrow with “Tug of War!” A 2012 comedy, it follows the efforts of a young public-relations official for a city government who is tasked with putting together a women’s team for a national tug-of-war tournament.
That’s followed at 1.30 by 2013’s “A Story of Yonosuke”. Set in 1987, the light-hearted comedy is about the romantic misadventures of a wide-eyed young man.
Thai-Japanese relations are explored in “Saudade”, screening at 5pm tomorrow. Taking its title from the Portuguese word for homesickness, the 2011 drama deals with the migrant-worker community as seen though the eyes of a young Japanese man who enters the construction trade. He bonds with his Japanese co-workers over a shared interest in Thai culture, and, especially, Thai women. They also encounter Brazilian labourers, and get into a rap-music battle with them. The movie will be followed by a talk by director Tomita Katsuya with two local film experts, director Panu Aree and critic Wiwat “Filmsick” Lertwiwatwongsa.
Sunday kicks off at 11am with “Akko-Chan: The Movie”. From 2012, it’s a live-action adaptation of the pioneering “magic girl” subgenre of anime and manga. Haruka Ayase (“Oppai Volleyball”, “Cyborg She”) portrays the young woman, whose magic compact mirror allows her to transform into anything.
Next at 1.30pm, the stratified society of a high school is examined in the much-acclaimed 2012 drama “The Kirishima Thing”, in which the student body is left reeling after the sudden disappearance of the school’s leader and star volleyball player. Out of this backdrop emerges a geeky kid from the school’s film club. He wants to make a zombie movie on the school’s rooftop. Praised by critics, “The Kirishima Thing” won several awards, including the Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year and Director of the Year for Daihachi Yoshida.
Japan’s official submission to the Oscars, “The Light Shines Only There” closes out Sunday’s programme with a 4pm screening. Although it didn’t make the final list of nominees, the film has been lauded by critics for its depiction of lost souls eking out an existence at the margins of society in a desolate port town.
During the week there’s just one film each day, at 7 nightly.
Monday brings the latest from important director Nobuhiko Obayashi, “Casting Blossoms to the Sky”, in which a reporter heads to Nagaoka to cover the fireworks festival and to write about people displaced by the Great Tohoku Earthquake of 2011. She also reconnects with a former flame.
Tuesday’s selection is 2011’s “Hospitalite”, in which a small printing shop is turned upside-down when the son of the family’s wealthy benefactor shows up looking for a job.
“About the Pink Sky”, screening on Wednesday, might have a colourful title, but it was shot in black and white. The comic drama, which premiered in competition at Sundance in 2012, deals with a high-school girl who finds a wallet containing a large sum of cash. She sets out to find the wallet’s owner.
Thursday’s entry heads to Okinawa for “Leaving on the 15th Spring”, a coming-of-age drama about a girl faced with the prospect of leaving home to attend high school.
You’ll see dead people in “Until the Break of Dawn”, screening next Friday. Veteran actress Kirin Kiki stars as a grandmother who is training her young grandson to be a tsunagu, a spirit medium, who “connects” people to their dearest departed.
February 7 has an encore screening of “Lupin III” at 1.30pm, followed at 4pm by a Bangkok-only preview of a new film, “Hand in the Glove”, which has Thai and Japanese talents on both sides of the lens.
Filmed entirely in historic Kumamoto, “Hand in the Glove” involves a prince visiting from a fictional country who seeks to escape the clutches of his minders and experience life as an ordinary person. He’s portrayed by Thai actor-musician Chanon Rikulsurakan, best known for his supporting role in “The Love of Siam” and his work with the music band August. The second feature from indie actor-director Yusuke Inaba, its cinematography is by young Thai lensman Pairach Khumwan, who landed the job because his work on director Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s two popular features “36” and “Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy”. They’ll all be present for a talk afterward, along with other cast members.
The Bangkok screenings wrap up on February 8 with “The Ravine of Goodbye” at 1.30 and the closing film, “My Man”, at 6.30pm. Directed by Tatsushi Omori, 2013’s “Ravine of Goodbye” puts characters through the emotional and moral wringers with a story about a mother suspected of killing her own child.
“My Man” explores a father-daughter relationship of sorts, with Asano from “Lupin III” heading the cast as a lonely 26-year-old man taking in his orphaned 10-year-old niece, a refugee from the 2011 tsunami. However, their relationship is fraught with controversy in their snowy village, and the odd couple must make their escape to Tokyo.