Director Kei Chika-ura on His Breakthrough Feature ‘Great Absence’

One of many best Japanese impartial movies of the previous few years is lastly touchdown in U.S. cinemas this weekend. Second-time director Kei Chika-ura’s Nice Absence, which debuted to sturdy critiques on the 2023 Toronto Movie Competition and later received the very best actor prize in San Sebastian for its star, Japanese display icon Tatsuya Fuji (Within the Realm of the Senses), opens in New York on Friday and Los Angeles on July 26, with a nationwide rollout to comply with. 

Nice Absence facilities on Takashi (Mirai Moriyama), an bold stage and display actor, who’s drawn again into the orbit of his estranged father (Fuji) by a jarring telephone name from the police. His father’s second spouse is lacking and the outdated man, as soon as an esteemed physics professor, seems to be affected by the latter phases of acute dementia. Takashi, together with his new spouse (Yoko Maki) by his aspect, swiftly decamps to his father’s dwelling on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu, and there the movie transitions into the mode of a beguiling and heartbreaking thriller, because the younger man regularly grasps what has grow to be of his long-absent father’s spouse and life.

Because the movie’s official abstract elegantly places it: “At a sure level in life we frequently should take care of a previous that was regarded as forgotten, misplaced endlessly, and which as a substitute resurfaces, with all of the emotional awkwardness generated by undesirable absences, reminiscence lapses, and the lacking items of the puzzle of our existence.”

Acclaimed Japanese cinematographer Yutaka Yamazaki (greatest recognized for his work with arthouse favorites Hirokazu Kore-eda and Naomi Kawase) shot Nice Absence on 35mm movie inventory with principally basic, mounted digital camera set-ups, lending the story’s elegant transitions from flashbacks to the current day all the richness and gravitas of jumbled however vivid reminiscence. 

Forward of Nice Absence‘s U.S. premiere, The Hollywood Reporter linked with Chika-ura by way of Zoom to debate the movie’s deeply private roots and its implicit commentary on the altering nature of marriage roles in Japan. 

Inform me in regards to the inventive genesis of Nice Absence. 

Nicely, I’ve to return to my debut function, Complicity. It premiered on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition in 2018, however because it was an impartial movie, I had some issue discovering a distributor in Japan, so it didn’t launch in my nation till 2020. By that point, I had already written a complete script for my second function and I used to be all prepared to enter manufacturing. However then the world stopped due to COVID-19, and across the identical time I obtained a telephone name from the police in Fukuoka telling me that my father was being “protected.” They didn’t say he had been arrested; they stated he was beneath safety. I used to be shocked and didn’t perceive what this meant. What really occurred was that my father had positioned a misery name, saying that he and his spouse have been being held hostage by a person with a gun. In fact, this wasn’t true. My father had begun to endure from acute dementia — and I had no thought. I used to be completely stunned, as a result of my father was a retired college professor, and though I didn’t like him a lot, by all appearances he was a really dependable member of society. Everybody who lived round his home was actually upset as a result of an enormous variety of armed cops had stormed the neighborhood in response to his emergency name. It was a giant incident. I instantly boarded a bullet practice and traveled from Tokyo to Fukuoka [on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu], and I then began making month-to-month journeys to spend time with him. Reflecting on all the paralyzing experiences of the pandemic, in addition to my private disaster with my father, I made a decision to desert the venture I used to be able to shoot. I wanted to jot down one thing that resonated with my present mindset in addition to what the entire world was going by means of. It’s a fictional movie, nevertheless it was very a lot impressed by my very own expertise with my father. 

Was the movie you deserted one thing completely totally different? What was it like? 

Yeah, it was very totally different. It was a style movie, a thriller film. However Nice Absence additionally has some thriller film components, so perhaps I carried a few of that over. 

Apart from that inciting incident, in what methods did you draw by yourself expertise through the writing and creation of Nice Absence? 

One factor is the protagonist’s persona. He’s a really restrained particular person and doesn’t like to specific his emotions — and that’s principally the best way I’m. After I first mentioned the position of Takuya with Mirai Moriyama, he stated he didn’t actually perceive what was occurring within the movie, as a result of the character expresses no clear motivation and there’s no clear emotional motion. He wasn’t actually positive how he would play the character. I advised him that Takuya is principally primarily based on my persona — and Moriyama began to watch and examine me, and I believe this helped him found out how you can inhabit the protagonist. Moriyama is a really distinctive actor in Japan. Apart from the numerous movies he’s been in, he’s very effectively often known as a stage actor and a up to date dancer. However as a consequence of his extraordinary physicality, he’s usually requested to play eccentric roles in Japanese movies. So I used to be actually excited to see him act in a really managed, restrained approach, and I believe he gave a superb efficiency.

In Japan and different international locations with growing older populations, dealing with dementia, both firsthand or by way of a cherished one, is changing into an more and more common expertise. However as I watched the movie, I questioned whether or not you is perhaps striving in direction of a extra basic type of universality as effectively. The circumstances your character finds himself in are fairly excessive (he’s been estranged from his dad for 20 years), however I discovered myself regarding the movie’s central thriller nonetheless — that considerably uncanny query of who your mother and father actually are, or have been, as individuals, and being pressured to reassess the entire sweep of their lives as they method the ultimate chapter.

That’s a really attention-grabbing perspective. It calls to thoughts a scene within the movie for me — the third confrontation between the daddy and son within the care facility. That is the scene the place the daddy pleads with the son to forgive him. The son doesn’t wish to, however finally he offers in and says, “Okay, I forgive you.” Some viewers interpreted this as their reconciliation. For me, it wasn’t a reconciliation; it was an inversion of their relationship — of protector and guarded.  Shortly after this, in a really symbolic second, the son offers his father his belt and helps him put it on. So, this movie is a thriller — and it’s additionally in regards to the roles of husbands and wives in Japan — however on an essential degree, it’s a narrative a couple of man changing into a grownup and rising past his father. 

Was making this movie a part of that course of for you?

Nicely, the rationale I like cinema is all about my father. My father took me to the theater each weekend of my childhood. I grew up in West Berlin, earlier than the autumn of the wall in 1989, as a result of that’s the place my father was working. As I used to be rising up, my father all the time advised me that the very first movie I noticed within the theater was Each Man for Himself by Jean Luc Godard. 

Wow, that isn’t a youngsters’ film…

(Laughs.) Yeah, I used to be simply 4 or 5 years outdated, so I don’t keep in mind it in any respect. However these have been the sorts of movies he would take me to, and he all the time jogged my memory that this was the primary one I ever noticed in a cinema. So this grew to become an important truth for me. Nevertheless it was not a reminiscence in my thoughts or coronary heart. It solely actually existed in his thoughts — and by 2020 his thoughts was fading. So amidst this disaster, I assumed that I wanted to take the true which means of this reminiscence over — into my physique. That’s a really summary thought, nevertheless it’s the true purpose I felt I needed to make this movie earlier than I might go on to different tasks. 

You talked about that Nice Absence can also be a narrative in regards to the altering nature of marriage in Japanese society.

Nicely, with the connection between the daddy and his spouse, Naomi, I’m portraying the older technology, the place the girl stepped behind the person and her life was all about supporting her husband. My mother and father have been precisely like that. With this story, I attempted to free Naomi — to let her discover her personal approach for the rest of her life. Nevertheless it’s not solely about her private journey, I additionally needed to specific my hope for a extra best scenario between Japanese women and men. The youthful couple displays the present scenario for Japanese women and men. It’s flat, there’s no hierarchy, they usually see and help one another. 

So, I’ve to ask you about casting and collaborating with Tatsuya Fuji. He’s had such an incredible profession. Why did need him for this half and the way would you describe the character of your collaboration? 

Fuji is undoubtedly one in every of Japan’s legendary actors and I’ve a deep admiration for his work — particularly the movies he made with Nagisa Oshima in Seventies. Ever since I started making my first quick movies, I had the dream of making a function that may very well be thought of one in every of Fuji’s signature works. And you recognize, for this movie, he received the very best actor award on the San Sebastian Movie Competition final 12 months. So I’m glad that I can say that I achieved one in every of my largest desires as a filmmaker. I didn’t forged him for this movie. Somewhat, I made this whole movie merely with a view to work with him. I needed to be part of his historical past. And what’s it wish to work with him? He’s all the time nice. I don’t direct him on set in any respect. I do nothing. He’s simply there. He reveals up and he delivers — as you noticed within the movie. That’s our relationship. It’s all about mutual belief.