We want to go beyond social norms and moral concepts.
From Episode 3, "Once More.
Aya's values in love are changing with the times, and I think that relationships that do not take the form of romance will become more important in the future. Considering this, the woman Aya played by Aoba Kawai in the third episode "Once More" of "Coincidence and Imagination" seems to be someone who has lived in a relationship that is different from romantic love. How did you think of her character?
If you ask me, that may be part of it. But I think what I thought about her character is summed up in that last exchange. I think the last scene of the story is the one in which she was able to express her dormant feelings, which she had never told anyone, to someone who was both a complete stranger and someone she was close to.
While writing "Coincidence and Imagination," I had the feeling from the beginning that I was writing about the same thing in all three stories, which all deal with love, but in the end I feel they are stories about characters finding something other than love. To be honest, I think all of my films are like that. I have always wanted to depict people who enter into a different kind of relationship, one that cannot be described in words, while still using love as an entry point. In my opinion, love and sex are doomed to fail. On the other hand, I also feel that only through such failures can other possibilities be oriented. So love and sex are just one of the routes to that unspoken relationship. Therefore, I think it is quite natural that there will be people who place importance on relationships other than love.
From Episode 1, "Magic (Something Like).
In the first episode, "Something Like Magic," Kotone Furukawa plays a woman named Meiko who is out of step with the norms of society, but the place she ends up at seems like a refreshing place. I think the place she arrives at in the end is a very refreshing place.
After all, I have no intention of dealing only with things that cannot be verbalized. Social norms are largely composed of moral codes that tell us what we should and should not do, and the language that expresses them. However, what we call emotions often do not conform to such moral concepts. I would like to see characters who reach a point completely different from the norm, so to speak, from what is expressed in words. At least, that is my motivation for making films now.
A: "Coincidence and Imagination" is a film that consists entirely of verbal exchanges, but even so, the final destination is something that cannot be described in words.
Words can open a kind of tunnel between two people, but it is not the words themselves that are being exchanged in the conversation. It is something different from words that is being exchanged through the words that are exchanged. And it is precisely in order for these "unspoken" areas to emerge that I think many things need to be put into words. And perhaps the actor also needs to get to the "unspoken parts" of the character.
I feel that the story of a conversation about love and sex that leads to an unexpected place is similar to a Hong Sang-soo movie. In particular, the use of a characteristic zoom in this film, which seems to immediately come to mind.
Of course I like Hong Sang-soo's films, especially his short film "LIST" (2011), which is one of my favorite films and one of my motivations when I make short films. However, when it comes to zoom, I also feel that it is not unique to him (laughs). Hong Sang-soo's use of zoom is really sophisticated. If you want to get a better look at a person's expression in an exchange while maintaining the space-time continuity, you can simply zoom in. In my case, I think I used it in a more ridiculous way. Simply put, it is a declaration that all of this is a lie, that it is all fake. But I feel that "things that are not fictitious" can only be created in a way that is believable from such a situation. You could say that the whole story is like that, but I would say that Zoom is the final nail in the coffin. Zoom still has a lot of potential, and I would like to continue using it from time to time until no one says it is Hong Sang-soo anymore (laughs).
![Preview Present] Ryusuke Hamaguchi's film based on Haruki Murakami's fascinating short story. The past, lies and illusions start running in "Drive My Car".](https://www.houyhnhnm.jp/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/main-700x467.jpg)
