The "Big Screen Four Muses" that Lead Contemporary Japan

The "Big Screen Four Muses" selected at the Tokyo Film Festival are the most well-known in China, Yu Aoi and Aoi Miyazaki, in addition to the fact that both are idols and powerful actors, in terms of fashion, both are also regarded as representatives of the "Mori family".

Global Magazine Reporter / Yang Ting (from Tokyo)

At the 30th Tokyo International Film Festival, the organizing committee curated the theme of "Muse on the Big Screen" for its highlight unit "Japan Now", focusing on the "four actresses who lead contemporary Japanese films" - Yu Aoi, Aoi Miyazaki, Hikaru Manjima and Sakura Ando, and screened two films starring each of them.

The four actors were all born in 1985, just after the year of their establishment. What roles has "Four Flowers Dan" played? How do you see your work? Global magazine reporters interviewed them one by one.

Yu Aoi: Hana and Alice are still best friends

Unlike the light-colored kimono and standard Japanese beauty at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Film Festival, when interviewed by The Globe magazine reporter, Aoi Yu wore a dark blue high-necked wide knit shirt, a thick light gray long skirt, and a ponytail, and the style can be said to be between the Japanese small freshness and the popular sexual frigid wind. The idol who followed Shunji Iwai in the youth films "Everything about Lily Week" and "Flowers and Alice" that became popular in Asia at the beginning of this century and was imitated in dress has transformed into a powerful actress.

This year is the 14th year of the release of "Flowers and Alice", and Yusuke Aoi said that Suzuki Apricot, who plays Hana, is still her best friend of the same age, often chatting on the phone and making dinner appointments. "Now sometimes when you go to the café, you can still hear the music of "Flowers and Alice". Every time I feel at this time, this movie is still loved by everyone. ”

The film was also selected for this year's Tokyo Film Festival screening, and Iwai, Suzuki Apricot and Yu Aoi reunited on stage to accept questions from the audience. Compared to Iwai, who has added a little wrinkles, and Suzuki Apricot, who has a blessed body, Yu Aoi seems to have just become more calm and calm. She chuckled softly, sometimes approachable like a neighbor's daughter, and sometimes exuded a cool goddess aura.

"There is an approachable side to her personality, and there is also a side to the flower of The High Ridge." The Tokyo Film Festival Organizing Committee commented on Yu Aoi. If you have seen the 2015 Japanese drama "Dr. Luntaro" and seen Yu Aoi as a Geisha Nishibashi with his eyes and hands raised, you will agree with this.

Yoji Yamada, a master of contemporary Japanese cinema and director of the "Injiro's Story" series, has also used her many times. The Tokyo Film Festival screened two films starring Yu Aoi, one of which is the work of director Yoji Yamada - the comedy "Family Suffering 2", which revolves around the story of an ordinary family with a "mature divorce", Yu Aoi and his wife Satoshi Mu play a grandchild couple, which is the regulator of this family, and director Yoji Yamada commented that Yoji Yamada commented on Yoji Yamada's performance of "the tenderness and hope needed by contemporary society" in the film.

Talking about whether he wants to appear in Chinese movies or co-productions, Aoi honestly said that he has not been to China yet, but he is very eager for China's mountain wilderness and hopes to shoot there. When she heard that she had an "International Aid Association" with 190,000 followers on Weibo in China, and that her dress had been imitated as a model for "Forest Girls" since the "Alice" era, she was very surprised and said that she was completely unaware.

"I didn't really plan what kind of style and image I wanted to create, but at each stage I followed my curiosity, did what I wanted to do, and wore the clothes I wanted to wear."

When the reporter said that she hoped to see her and Iwai and Suzuki apricot cooperate again, such as playing a 30-year-old flower and Alice, she smiled heartily, "Before apricot and I went to Harajuku to eat ice cream, now it has become a hot tea together, maybe it is really old." So the 30-something flower and Alice's plot should be joined together with the insurance of where! ”

Aoi Miyazaki: I don't remember the past, and I don't envision the future

The "Four Muses on screen" selected by the Tokyo Film Festival are the most well-known in China, Yu Aoi and Aoi Miyazaki, in addition to the fact that both are idols and powerful actors, in terms of fashion, both are also regarded as representatives of the "Mori family". And who is the "Mori sect leader" has been debated endlessly among the "Japanese fans" in Japan and China. Some people say that Aoi Miyazaki is slightly better, because she has long served as the spokesperson for the "Mori" women's clothing brand "The earth".

The two of them at the film festival also gave people the feeling of this, compared to Aoi Yu's more mature female route, Miyazaki Aoi's dark long skirt with intricate ruffles and vintage patterns, a set of tweed check jumpsuits with white gauze on the upper body, is still faithfully "walking the stage" for the cute Mori style. But her round baby face and signature warm smile are also very appropriate, even though she is about to turn 32.

The Tokyo Film Festival featured two films starring Aoi Miyazaki, "EUREKA," which she starred in when she was 14 years old, and Fury, a suspense film that grossed 1.9 billion yen in Japan alone last year.

"EUREKA" tells the story of the psychological trauma and healing of the surviving driver and a pair of passenger brothers and sisters in a bus hijacking incident, which was called "a narrative poem of healing and regeneration" by Japanese film critics at that time.

At the post-screening exchange meeting, Aoi Miyazaki revealed to everyone that this was her first film to play the lead role, and the director revealed that at that time, the audition for this role had only one content, that is, the director held a board for the girls who auditioned to follow the board and make a decision with "eye transparency".

"Her transparency is outstanding." But while both the director and the audience say she hasn't changed at all compared to when she was 14, Aoi Miyazaki herself said she didn't feel like she was looking at herself when she rewatched the film.

When a fan asked her if she would continue to be an actress as she grew older or married. Aoi Miyazaki said with a smile that when she made her debut when she was 4 years old shooting advertising, her parents let her participate in the shooting with the attitude of "leaving memories for life", but she did not expect to work like this, and she is a person who does not envision the future, nor does she think about the past, but only thinks that it is good to challenge new things.

At the exchange meeting of another recent film" "Fury", Miyazaki admitted that the film was quite a test of his acting skills. In the film, she plays the role of a teenage girl who discovers that her unidentified boyfriend may be a murderer, presenting the theme of "the difficulty and fragility of trust". "When I cried bitterly according to the script, the director was still shouting from the side, it was not enough, cry again, cry again!"

Lee Sang-il, the director in charge of the camera, said that that the shooting was like "boxing", "because many people have lost something in the grind of life, but Xiao Aoi did not, so I am not worried that she can't act". The director also half-jokingly said, "I was only worried that she would run away, so the crew looked at her during filming, so that she could only have two points and one line between the crew and the hotel." ”

Although the "baby face" made her role somewhat limited, Miyazaki's acting skills have long been recognized, especially in the Ōkawa drama "Tokuhime", playing the life of the adopted daughter of the Lord of Satsuma Domain and Tokugawa Ieori, who played an important role in the Meiji Restoration, not only becoming the youngest protagonist of the Ōkawa drama, but also setting a 24.5% rating, becoming the highest rating of the Ōkawa drama in 10 years, and winning the Japanese Drama Academy Award for Best Actress.

More than a decade ago, Yu Aoi, who starred with Aoi Miyazaki in the Japanese drama "Blue and White is Light Blue" and the movie "Pest", also commented: "Although we were about the same age, Aoi was already very professional at that time, and I was still completely new. ”

Hikaru Manjima: I didn't expect "Quartet" to make people cry

"Did Quartet make you cry?" Mitsuru Manjima, who played one of the protagonists in this year's hottest Japanese drama "Quartet" with a Douban score of 9.1, smiled wide-eyed, surprised with curiosity and a hint of rebellion. 32 years old, full of girlishness.

Just after the screening exchange meeting of the "Contemporary Japan" section of the film festival, Hikaru Manjima was interviewed by a reporter from Global Magazine. A light blue silk dress, the vermilion lips and earrings are as bright and moving, and the fluffy mushroom head seems to deliberately break the image of the "goddess" and create a little playful atmosphere. From the debut of a girl singer group member at the age of 12 to the Montreal Film Festival, he won the Japan Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress four times, and Mitsuru Manjima has earned the title of "Muse of the Contemporary Japanese Big Screen".

However, despite many film crowns, Manjima Hikaru's most widely known role in China is still the little sparrow in the Japanese drama "Quartet". The girl who always wears oversized clothes, sleepy eyes, a lazy and agile expression, neurotic and cute playing the cello on the street, has a pitiful life and past: she was used by her father as a super power girl to cheat money from childhood, and her father suffered from the cold violence of society after he was imprisoned, and he could not get a normal job, so he had to rely on self-taught cello to sell on the street.

The play's script was written by the famous Japanese playwright Yuji Sakamoto, who wrote the classic Tokyo Love Story at the age of 24.

Mitsuru Manjima said that she has cooperated with Sakamoto many times and can be said to be Sakamoto's "spokesperson". However, she did not expect that this drama would be so popular, and it also went to China and touched so many people. The first description she uses about Little Sparrow is "a musician abandoned on the street", while her idea about character building is that "the past cannot be changed, there is no trace of the pain of the past on her, only wants to play her as a positive girl who only thinks about the future and only wants to live, with music flowing in her body." ”

It is said that she practiced the cello fiercely for the filming of the play, and listened to classical music with headphones plugged in whenever she had time. What impressed her most about the show herself was that "the audience looks very carefully and interprets it very deeply, in fact, the actors shoot very easily, like a passing game."

"Ease doesn't mean we don't put in, we don't work hard, it's the kind that lifts a heavy weight!" It is probably this kind of weightlifting that has the little finch that usually seems to be asleep at any time, wearing a black dress and pulling the strings.

The Tokyo Film Festival featured two new films starring Hikaru Manjima – the love story "Life and Death by the Sea" set in the Pacific War and the reasoning film "Fool's Tales" based on Naoki's award-winning work.

The former tells the story of the secret servicemen and their wives separated by the war, reunited as novelists after the war, and their respective descriptions of common memories are very different. Mitsuru Manjima said that the film was filmed in her hometown of Amami Oshima, where the local nature is very primitive, "all people can see the sea from home", and shooting in dialects gives her a feeling of returning to the original point.

Regarding the theme of the film, she said that it is mainly about "love" and that war is the shadow cast. Outside the play, she also became a lover with Yongshan Douxuan, who played the male protagonist. "I like to express the theme of love, love is fun! Love is complicated, but love is simply sparkling. ”

Fools is a speculative film about murderers. Mitsuru Manjima said that during the filming, "my heart has been in pain because it is a story of murder."

When it comes to Chinese films, Hikari Manjima is very excited to say that she likes Chinese films the most in Asian films and hopes to cooperate with Chinese directors. "Chinese movies are very powerful, not to say that the scene is big, but the feeling of inner peace but power."

She said that when she began to dabble on the big screen, she just watched "Chongqing Forest" directed by Wong Kar-wai and starring Faye Wong, and Faye Wong's acting skills inspired her a lot. Speaking of Zhang Yimou, what impressed her most was the film picture he directed.

Sakura Ando: Endless possibilities

"The director said let me swallow the script and pull it out again!" Sakura Ando, who was selected as one of the "muses on the big screen" at this year's Tokyo International Film Festival, blurted out at the post-screening exchange meeting of her starring film "Family Country", and the scene was full of laughter.

Compared to Yu Aoi, Aoi Miyazaki, and Hikaru Manjima, Sakura Ando may not be as well known in China, and her face is not a typical Japanese cute type, but slightly tough and handsome. In the Japanese film and television industry, she has become an indispensable representative of powerful actresses, and the Tokyo Film Festival Organizing Committee commented that she "has an overwhelming personality and acting skills", except for the 2015 Japan Academy Awards, on her wiki profile, the awards need to be listed by year.

The Tokyo Film Festival screened two of her films, "The Land of the Family" and "0.5mm.".

Directed by Korean-Japanese director Leung Young-hee, a documentary filmmaker, the former is based on his personal experience and tells the story of a Korean brother who went to Korea in japan in the 1970s to live in Korea according to his father's wishes, and returned to Japan for treatment more than 20 years later due to a serious illness and reunited with his sister. Sakura Ando starred in the film as her younger sister, the director himself. Liang Yingji said bluntly that when she thought about filming this subject, she felt that "if Only Sakura Ando would play herself." Sakura Ando's delicate expression and body movements vividly interpret her sister's joy at her brother's return, her incomprehension that her brother will be brought back to that "country that seems to be near and far", and the helplessness and pain. Sakura Ando said that the director herself was a very special experience, and it also made her feel a huge challenge.

"0.5mm" is written and directed by Sakura Ando's sister Momoko Ando, telling a warm story between caregivers and the elderly in nursing homes. At the post-screening exchange meeting, the director's sister commented that the charm of the actor's sister Sakura Ando is "motherhood", and the film shows this side of her.

"Before the release of 0.5mm, I often heard people say that I was a 'terrible woman like a rock' when I attended autograph sessions, and this work showed a different me."

The reason why it gives people the impression of a "rock-like woman" is because in the film "Love of One Hundred Yuan" after Sakura Ando won the Japan Academy Award, the story of a "old waste wood girl" who embarked on the road of boxers was brilliantly interpreted. Ando in the film was evaluated as "all the drama in the eyes", from the cynicism and confusion of the "nibbling old" stage to becoming sharp, firm and full of "fierceness" after contacting boxing.

In "0.5 mm", the caregiver girl played by Sakura Ando is kind and soft enough to accept the request of the paralyzed old man's daughter to sleep with the old man "as a dying gift", helping many lonely old people who have closed themselves to open the atrium.

In addition, Sakura Ando has also played a villain, in the early work "Exposure of Love", Sakura Ando played the violent Furuike, in a perverted way to love the male protagonist, and acted with Mitsudai Manjima, who is also one of the four muses of this Tokyo Film Festival. "Sakura Ando is full of power and has endless possibilities in her body." The Japanese media commented on her.