Notes
From The Director
This
affair happened sixteen years ago, in 1988. Born of different fathers,
these children never went to school and didn't legally exist because
their births were never declared. Abandoned by their mother, they
lived on their own for six months. The death of the youngest girl
put a tragic end to this adventure. Curiously, none of the other inhabitants
of their apartment building were aware of the existence of three of
the children. This headline brought up various questions to my mind.
The life of these children couldn't have been only negative. There
must have been a richness other than the material, based on those
moments of understanding, joy, sadness and hope. So I didn't want
to show the "hell" as seen from the outside, but the "richness"
of their life as seen from inside.
over
15 years
I had a lot of trouble getting this project off the ground. Fifteen
years passed after I wrote the first draft of the screenplay. Would
this affair still be an actuality fifteen years later? Before making
the film, I had to ask myself that question. According to statistics
from Japan's Minister of Education, the number of homeless children
between the ages of seven and fourteen dropped from 533 in the year
1987 to 302 in the 2000. But these statistics only refer to children
whose births have been declared. If we take into consideration that
the birth rate has dropped, we could suppose that today there are
more children who are living illegally the way Akira and his brothers
and sisters did. I estimate this headline was not an isolated case
in Tokyo. It is more of a social problem that concerns us all. The
protagonist of the film doesn't just represent the young boy in
the 1988 headlines. He is one child among thousands today, which
we are not even aware of.
a
second director
YOU is someone who lives in the present. I understand that she had
the positive, happy-go-lucky quality I was looking for to play the
role of the mother. She arrived at the shoot without any preparation.
She had not read the screenplay I had given her. That could be interpreted
both as being relaxed and self-confident. During the shoot, her
powers of concentration and her lively spirit often impressed me.
She was enormously spontaneous. At the same time, she knew how to
bring the children back into the story of the film when they wandered
off. So I implicated her into the direction of actors by given her
instructions like "You have to make Akira laugh." We can
really say that she was like a second director on the set.
the
apartment
Seventy percent of the film takes place in an apartment. To shoot
the inside of the apartment in a different way, I thought it would
be a good idea to find one with a balcony. An elevator wasn't necessary.
It was better to see the protagonist walk up and down the stairs
at the beginning and the end of the film. The selected apartment
met all the requirements. Plus, it was located on the second floor,
at the end of a dark hallway. So it was isolated compared to others,
which was ideal for this woman who wanted to live hidden away with
her children. The window on the staircase also caught my attention.
I wanted to use it to give a touch of suspense to the daily life
of the children. The apartment was decorated: the mother's bedroom
covered in tatami, the balcony, the children's room, the kitchen
and the living room. The total surface area was 41.3 square meters.
Everything took place in this universe.
apollo
chocolates
We shot with a voluntarily detailed script, which the children spontaneously
brought in numerous modifications. These were notably linked to
the fact that Yuya, who plays the role of Akira, grew up a lot during
the one year shoot. But not only that. For example, I never imagined
little Yuki loved Strawberry Pocky, even thought she tells me she
prefers Apollo chocolates. Kimura Hiei, who plays Shigeru, ate very
little during the shoot because he is a very finicky eater. We imagined
him liking instant ramen noodles and chance had it that he adored
them. In the scene where he finishes his rice soup, I let him improvise.
During the casting, a little girl came with noisy sandals. I liked
this detail. When Yuki goes out in search of her mother, she wears
sandals like those.
mandarin
oranges
When I was little, I grew flowers, fruits, and vegetables, like
the mandarin orange tree still growing on my mother's balcony. So
this film was nourished not only by the children with whom I worked,
but also by the details and feelings of my own childhood (the anxiety
of waiting for my mother's return, the sadness of losing a friend).
The age difference between the protagonist and myself is large.
But I was born in Tokyo and I have always lived there. I think it's
the location that I can best depict. I know the universe of these
children. I experienced similar feelings to those they too could
be feeling. This is the spirit that allowed me to put a piece of
myself into the film.
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