I was convinced of Noriko Yuasa’s talent at my first brush with it at Osaka Asian Film Festival (OAFF) 2018 with her short Ordinary Everyday and have only become more convinced as I have travelled through her other shorts, from Looking For My Lost Sunflowers (2014) to Girl, Wavering (2015) and Coming Back Sunny (2019) – for which I interviewed her.
She’s a great filmmaker with complete control of cinematic language and is unafraid to use the tools of the medium.
She treats sight and sound as a malleable material, playing with energetic or elongated editing and fantastical (sometimes) freewheeling arrays of colours and camera angles combined with equally vivid aural landscapes and performances to create heady atmospheres that such a viewer in on an aesthetic level and delivers quite affecting stories of lives in contemporary Japan. In short, they dazzle and move you on a visceral level to feel something as well as think.
She needs to be seen by more and her sophomore feature film, Performing KAORU’s Funeral is a great chance.
Performing KAORU’s Funeral is the story (co-written with Takato Nishi) of people coming together to remember the title character, a screenwriter who has died in a tragic accident. It explores the notion of trying to remember a person when people are hard to understand by pulling together the views and memories of an array of people with varying loyalties while also commenting on Japanese society through the prism of the entertainment industry. Its 100 minutes races by via energetic time-eliding editing that unites different times, locations, and perspectives with a thrilling fluidity, richly colourful lensing from DoP Victor Català. It won the Japan Cuts Award at the Osaka Asian Film Festival 2024
Thank you for making Performing KAORU’s Funeral. This was definitely one of my top films of the festival.
The last time I wrote about this, it was to announce a Kickstarter campaign so I am pleased to see the film come to fruition. Despite its humble origins, it looks absolutely great, much better than a lot of bigger-budgeted movies because of your imaginative use of colour and shot composition/framing that created a rich atmosphere. Thus, it was enjoyable to watch, all while the information was clearly delivered. Also, the editing (along with the jazz drumming) worked really well at making the film feel punchy!
It really grabbed and held my attention!
The sleek and nimble scenes of the non-linear narrative meant not a second was wasted and any gaps in story felt like you trusted the audience to make connections. The connections felt meaningful because the performers were all excellent in imbuing their characters – no matter how briefly on screen – with life and so they acted as the connective tissue between scenes and they were fun to watch so that the film’s dramatic developments were enjoyable.
Looking back at that initial Kickstarter campaign, the only thing that seems to have remained the same is the set-up for the story. The style of the trailer and certain details feel a world away from each other. Can you explain your inspiration for the film and the process of development and the changes that occurred?
First of all, I would like to thank you for watching this film so closely and for the wonderful feedback. Thank you so much. I am very, very happy.
The idea for this film started out as a personal experience for me, as a friend of mine passed away in 2017, and I wanted to understand and settle the ultimate question of “why people die”, which I could not accept.
I remember that it was in the summer of 2017 when I requested Mr. [Takato] Nishi, the chief writer of the film, to write a completely original script about “a woman who left a will that asked her ex-husband to be a pallbearer at her funeral”.
The title at the time was “A Woman Name KAORU”. It was once prepared for a certain project competition. After that competition, I remember that I introduced KAORU’s daughter “Kaoru” as a new character in the story, one who never wants to acknowledge ‘death’. We proceeded with a joint script, so we had quite deep discussions each time, and this decision was quite a big one. Furthermore, it was definitely the global pandemic (COVID) that determined the variety of characters, scripts, and other details that we have today.
During that long period when the world stopped, I kept thinking about “Why do people die?”. Then I proceeded with filming, editing, and music, and finally arrived at the conclusion, “Still, People Will Live no matter what”. I believe that this long, long period of time has made this story what it is today.
Narratively speaking, the film is like a puzzle that works to fit in various characters different perceptions of Kaoru. They slot together to create a fuller picture for the audience but not each individual character. This points to the idea that we can never truly know another person. Can you describe your approach to structuring the story, on both a writing and editing level, and how you wanted to present Kaoru?
I absolutely agree with you. I believe that it is impossible to truly understand another person, and I think it is even the same about myself. There are many films, especially in Japan, that take place at funerals and depict what kind of person the deceased was and what kind of feelings he or she left behind, but I wanted to make a film based on the idea that “no one can ever know the truth about a person,” and I hope to continue to do so. I think it is interesting to create a world full of gray, where there is no such thing as black and white. Mr. Nishi, our chief writer, is a trustworthy person who excels at portraying an ensemble drama of people living in a society filled with absurdity, so we asked him to write the script 100% freely and worked together on it over several years.
For the character of KAORU, we used a method of layering episodes that represent her image, mainly as Yokotani’s recollections. I arranged the episodes like a chronology and expanded them to embody the phrase, “No one can ever know the truth about a person”. I tried not to use scenes or dialogues intentionally to express that “she is like this, she is like that”. By combining the present timeline with the past timeline that depicts KAORU, the script and editing team searched for the best way to gradually allow the audience to feel KAORU’s presence after watching the whole film.
Towards the end of the film, events come at a faster and faster clip. Was there more to the story that you wanted to tell but had to cut out?
I feel very happy about such an impression as it was not intentionally done.
This may be a bit of an aside, but let me talk about the story (script) production. This film is an ensemble drama with many characters, and each character has a detailed chronology. It would be a shame to call this a simple list of characters, but I think it was a very enriching experience to be able to revisit it over and over again and work with Mr. Nishi, to polish even the smallest lines of dialogue.
Also, I have always wanted my films to be prose poems. It was a very difficult task to make sure that I had included everything I wanted to say, and that I had not subconsciously said too much, explained too much, or had not become a writer’s ego in the first place.
I think that the one takeaway I got from Kaoru is that she is determined and inspired. People had to keep up with her and that was hard for some. Her dedication to writing, raising her daughter, working – I did get a laugh when she hopped out of bed and immediately onto her laptop when struck by creativity. It reflects how many people live their lives and I felt that the character was well-rounded but could appreciate why so many misunderstood her.
Moving on…
Within seconds of the film starting, I was struck by the rich atmosphere. Your skilled use of colour and the framing of scenes was really fun while conveying information clearly. The staging and blocking of scenes is always rich with action as kids race about and the guests wander around the frame. I think you are one of the more exciting directors working today since you apply a whole host of cinematic techniques. It was exhilarating to watch.
Can you talk about your approach to using visuals to tell stories and how you applied it in Performing KAORU’S Funeral?
As I mentioned a bit in the upper section, I have always wanted the films I make to be prose poems. My approach to this film is that I decided not to tell a story. I wanted the audience to experience the film as a series of episodes and shots that build up to form the outline of the film as a whole.
I loved the Tokyo night-time sequences involving Kaoru and Jun. What is your favourite shot in the film?
This is a back shot of KAORU in the nude, which is also used in the international poster visual of the film. This sequence, in which KAORU suddenly turns to her computer while having a sex with Yokotani, and Yokotani looks at her with mixed feelings, was one of the shots I most wanted to capture when I was writing the screenplay.
Right now, I am thrilled that the shot has become the poster visual for the international version, and I hope that the audience, like Yokotani, will gaze at this back of Kaoru and feel the “attitude to life” that KAORU has.
How did you get the actors into their roles and work with them on set?
First, we held a full cast audition, which we had longed for. As a result, due to the postponement of the shooting due to the pandemic, we were able to provide most of the cast members with their scripts two years prior to the shooting. I feel that the most wonderful factor in the development of the actors’ roles was the fact that each actor was entrusted with the script and was able to work on their roles, costume fittings, and filming for a very long time. It was an invaluable experience for me to be able to work with such great actors in this environment.
One of the most vivid memories I have of the exchange with the actors was when Megumi Takizawa, who played the very difficult role of Chihiro (KAORU’s manager), asked me how she should play Chihiro on the set (as you know, Chihiro makes a serious confession at the climax and takes over the hearse). “It is not necessary to connect all of the roles in every sequence” I told her. ‘I want you to express your honest emotions as they are at that moment.” As a result, Takizawa-san gave an expressive performance of Chihiro that exceeded the script. I am grateful to her for making Chihiro a flesh-and-blood human being.
I hope you will enjoy this film from Chihiro’s point of view as well.
With the film set in your home prefecture of Okayama and when the female characters speak about standards in the film and television industry, it felt like you may have been delivering a personal insight. How much of this story is “write what you know”?
The dialogues and scenes spoken by the characters, not only the women but also those spoken by the producer Ando, are all based on my own experiences. I believe that films (including TV series) are “mirrors of society,” so it is my mission as a director to make films that have a universality within the social events of the time, so that people can watch them for long time to the far future.
I am curious about what inspired the story of the twin brothers and also the symbolism of the spider (if there is any symbolism) seen in a flashback to Kaoru’s life. Could you explain a little?
I would like to sincerely thank Mr. Nishi, for writing this character of the old twins which gives truly outstanding impression. The elderly twins had been present since the first draft in 2017, and I still vividly recall how I intuitively felt that I had to complete this work because their characters were in this story.
Surprisingly, Mr. Nishi, actually had elderly twins close to him. I heard that this character was conceived as a kind of “good luck charm” to be by Yokotani and KAORU’s side. I really love the episode of the old twins, but please allow me to add that it was the most difficult part of the actual production (lol).
As a result, the hard work continued into post-production, and the presence of the elderly twins was a major influence on the sound design, which is the most significant aspect of this film. We hope that the audience will pay attention to even the smallest details of the sound.
And the presence of a spider that appears in a sequence at the hand towel factory where KAORU works part-time. Unlike the elderly twins, this description was not in the script at all. I felt that this sequence, which shows the time KAORU struggles to stay alive, was not enough, and that it was just an explanation of the situation. I came to the conclusion that Kaoru is not the only one who is trying hard to live, and that all living things, regardless of whether they are human or not, are trying hard in their own way.
I had a vague idea that I wanted to find something on the set that could express “life, living desperately,” other than Kaoru. As a result, I was able to find a spider during the shoot by chance, and I was able to tell the cinematographer, Victor [Català], that I wanted this sequences to be shot as if it were a documentary.
I think we are very fortunate that everything in this film, including the dogs and ladybugs, succeeded in their cinematic expression.
Your film shares connections with other OAFF 2024 titles Suton and Blue Imagine in terms of theme and execution. What is your take on where the industry stands as to female participation in filmmaking right now?
First of all, we believe that women’s participation in Japanese society, not only in filmmaking, is still a problem that needs to be solved. 2024 is still a time when the old customs continue to prevail and women generally do not have the basic human rights to work in society commensurate with their abilities. I would add that this is fact not only for women, but also for people with handicaps and gender issues. This is despite the fact that society as a whole has not changed for the better for decades, and we need to resolve this situation and connect it to the future. Let me say this on the premise that the current situation in Japan is truly on the edge of a cliff, and that it is Japan that has not even been able to accurately grasp this situation.
Back to the situation about “film production” (drama and other visual production content industry). Unfortunately, it may very easily symbolize the problem of Japan as a whole.
Also, in this film, Performing KAORU ‘s Funeral, I do not intend to represent society as a problem only for women, because if an issue is a problem for women, it is also a problem for men, for any gender, for the elderly, for students, for children, for anyone who belongs to that society. As a member of society, I can say that the denial of the basic human right that everyone can work in society according to his or her ability is a great loss to society, and an industry that cannot clearly speak out about it will never be able to lead the future. What has been historically evident in Japan’s “film production” (drama production and other visual content industry) has been the same or even worse, and I must say that I despair at the fact that no one has taken the initiative to solve this situation before other industries do.
Nevertheless, I will continue to make films and live my life, believing that a future that can finally be seen beyond despair exists.
Thank you for this interview.
Performing KAORU’s Funeral was screened at the Osaka Asian Film Festival 2024.
You can read my review of Performing KAORU’s Funeral here.