Another View – Tokyo FilmeX Presents 2009 / Passion / Japan 2008
This delicately conceived film gradually reveals the true nature of the relationships within a group of adult friends. Unspoken, contradictory feelings and distant affairs rise to the surface. As the ambiguous title anticipates, passion can suggest affection, anger, or suffering.
A young couple announces their engagement at a celebration with friends whose reactions, however, indicate that within the group lurk unspoken, contradictory feelings concealing affairs of the distant past. While the women go home after the celebration, the men carry on and end up at the flat of a mutual girlfriend. During that night and the following days, tension between the participants rapidly comes to the surface and their mutual bonds fundamentally change. The movie structures the narration into four parts individually tied to a certain time and place, each of which moves the general situation in a surprising direction. As the ambiguous title anticipates, passion can suggest affection, anger, or suffering. The film treats the communication of extreme emotions as a variation on the cycle of violence from which there is seemingly no escape. This delicately-conceived film gradually shifts attention away from specific relationships to a common plane where the outcome becomes a complex meditation on wounding others and the burden of forgiveness.
115 min / Color, HD CAM
Director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
/ Screenplay Ryusuke Hamaguchi
/ Dir. of Photography Yuichi Yuzawa
/ Editor Ryoko Yamamoto
/ Producer Satoshi Fujii
/ Production Tokyo University of the Arts
/ Cast Aoba Kawai, Ryuta Okamoto, Fusako Urabe, Nao Okabe, Kiyohiko Shibukawa
/ Contact Tokyo University of the Arts
Ryusuke Hamaguchi (b. 1978, Japan) graduated in esthetics from Tokyo University in 2003, and then worked for three years as an assistant director in film and television. His interest in movies led him to further study, this time at the Graduate School of Film and New Media at the Tokyo University of Arts. Following his feature debut Solaris (2007), Hamaguchi shot Passion, his graduation project, screened at the Tokyo FilmeX and San Sebastian festivals.
Tokyo University of the Arts
12 - 8 Ueno Park, 110-8714, Tokyo
Japan
Phone: +81 505 525 2683
E-mail: [email protected]
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Film Director
Atsuko Morimune
Festival Organizer
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