Year: 2009
Duration: 109'
Shiro is trying to reconstruct his relationship with his father, who is gravely ill. He then begins to remind his high school years, when his father was also his P.E. teacher and soccer coach. But when the boy begins to feel pains which turn out to be the symptoms of a malignant tumor, he decides not to say anything to either his parents or his girlfriend. He continues to live his life as though everything were fine, remaining near his father in order to try to keep his promise of going fishing together someday. “What is particularly interesting is the choice to base the story on ‘normal’ characters and situations, far from those dysfunctional families and those deviant or deviated characters that often populate Sono’s films. Plus, thanks to the location, the music and, above all, the spectrum of colors and lights, the film is submerged in a crepuscular atmosphere of a ‘gentle end.’ [...] But also in this film what emerges is Sono’s tendency to complicate the audience’s viewing, as though to liquefy the predictability of the narration and of the very images.” (Matteo Boscarol)
Biography
film director
Sion Sono
Sion Sono (Toyokawa, Japan, 1961) is an internationally acclaimed Japanese filmmaker. His movies depict Japanese society in a provocative and violent way, amid a plethora of pop culture references. His most renown films include Suicide Club (2002), which is part of a trilogy on alienation along with Noriko’s Dinner Table (2005), winner of the Berliner Zeitung Jury Award, and Love Exposure (2008), winner of the FIPRESCI Award and the Caligari Film Award at the Berlinale. Love Exposure is also the first film of the “trilogy of hate,” which includes Cold Fish (2010) and Guilty of Romance (2011). He participated to the Venice Film Festival in 2011 with the feature Himizu, and in 2013 with Why Don’t You Play in Hell. The Torino Film Festival paid tribute to him with a retrospective in 2011. He participated in several TFF editions with his films Tokyo Tribe (2014), Love & Peace (2015), TAG (2015) and Shinjuku Swan (2015).
FILMOGRAFIA
The Room (1992), Suicide Club (2002), Noriko’s Dinner Table (2005), Strange Circus (2005), Hazard (2006), Exte: Hair Extensions (2007), Love Exposure (2008), Cold Fish (2010), Guilty of Romance (2011), Himizu (2011), Why Don’t You Play in Hell (2013), Tokyo Tribe (2014), Love & Peace (2015), Riaru onigokko (TAG, 2015), Shinjuku suwan (Shinjuku Swan, 2015), Antiporno (2016), Tokyo Vampire Hotel (serie tv/tv series, 2017).
Cast
& Credits
regia, soggetto, sceneggiatura/director, story, screenplay
Sion Sono
fotografia/cinematography
Ueno Shogo
montaggio/film editing
Ito Jun’ichi
scenografia/production design
Oba Hayato, Oba Yuto
costumi/costume design
Murashima Keiko
musica/music
Harada Tomohide
suono/sound
Saijo Hirosuke
interpreti e personaggi/cast and characters
Akira (Kita Shiro), Okuda Eiji (Kita Tetsuji), Ito Ayumi (Nakagawa Yoko), Keiko Takahashi (Kita Izumi), Sosuke Takaoka (Tamura Keita), Toshiki Ayata (il vecchio pescatore/Old Fisherman), Denden (Tanaka), Mitsuru Fukikoshi (il dottor/Dr Watanabe), Jiro Sato (l’uomo delle pompe funebri/Man of Funeral Home), Tarô Suwa (il commesso del negozio di pesca/Fishing Shop Clerk)
produttore/producer
Umemura Yasushi
produzione, vendita all’estero/production, world sales
Gaga Corporation
