When her nude photo collection "Santa Fe" was published in 1991, it was hailed by men all over Asia, but few of them would have taken Rie Miyazawa seriously as a performer. Fifteen years later, Miyazawa has long left the status of what the Japanese call an “idol” behind and has won both the Kinema Junpo award for best actress and a Blue Ribbon Award for her role in "The Face Of Jizo". It is only now, with her new film "Tony Takitani" debuting in Korea on Thursday, that Koreans will get a chance to appreciate her acting talent.
"Tony Takitani" is a film adaptation of Haruki Murakami's 1990 short story of the same name. The number of characters that appear in the film is extremely limited. Japan's top monologue artist Ogata Issei and Miyazawa dominate the screen. It's a story of a man, Tony Takitani, who after spending much of his life in solitude falls in love with Miss A, but after A -- a shopping addict -- dies, he tries to find a woman that can replace her. Miyazawa plays both A and B, the woman Tony hopes will step into A’s shoes.
The film is directed by Jun Ichikawa. Better known as a director of commercials, having bagged several Grand Prizes at the Cannes International Advertising festival, Ichikawa has also acquired a reputation for bringing literature to the screen, notably the novels of Banana Yoshimoto. "I've always wanted to appear in an Ichikawa production, so I begged him each time we met,” Myazawa says. “I was really happy to be offered a part at last."
The film is entirely set on a sound stage built on the outskirts of Yokohama. Miyazawa found the experience liberating.
It won the Special Jury Prize at last year's Locarno Film Festival, a sort of silver medal there, as well as the International Federation of Film Critics and Junior Jury awards. It seems Locarno was won over by the film's attempt to find a middle ground between film and theater and the bravura performance of its stars. "I don't believe I've ever been in a film like it,” Miyazawa enthuses.
Miyazawa also won a best actress award at the 2001 Moscow Film Festival for her role in "Peony Pavilion." The Kinema Junpo award was for best actress for "The Twilight Samurai" in 2002, and Japan's film festivals have showered her with acting awards, in near-universal recognition that the young provocateur had transformed herself into a leading actress. She is currently shooting "Hana yori mo naho," playing a woman who falls in love with a Samurai in a historical drama directed by Hirokazu Koreeda, director of "Nobody Knows".
