10/09/2024 - The Belgian director is back with a new film, which sees him continuing to explore his favourite theme – parenthood – while relocating his work to Japan

Six years after Our Struggles [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Guillaume Senez
film profile], Belgian director Guillaume Senez has reconnected with his favourite actor, Romain Duris, to make A Missing Part [+see also:
film review
interview: Guillaume Senez
film profile], and is continuing to explore his theme of choice, parenthood, while relocating his work to Japan and lending it a thus far unexplored lyrical dimension. The filmmaker looks back on his new film with us, which was presented in the Toronto Film Festival’s Centrepiece section.

Cineuropa: What made you want to tell this story?
Guillaume Senez: I never fantasised about making a film in Japan. We released Our Struggles there and Roman and I travelled to the country to present it. We started to think about making another film together. And then various French people told us about the situation in Japan with child custody following divorce. It was pretty clear for us; the story had floored us both.

It’s a story about parenthood, but it’s also an immigration story…
What I was interested in was the idea of telling the story of a foreigner who goes to another richer country, with a different language, a different religion, a different culture. There’s the film’s subject-matter, which is child custody in Japan following a separation, and then there’s the theme. In this case, it’s a French man in this particular situation, whereas we’re used to seeing this kind of a story involving Africans, South Americans or people from eastern countries. I get the feeling that, sometimes, these films take us by the hand to show us that situations aren’t right. And I wondered whether there might be a way to do things differently, to explore these situations by making them more identifiable for a viewer like me, with a protagonist who’s fairly reminiscent of my situation or the viewer’s. To make the same thing, but differently, creating a kind of reversal.

Formerly a chef, he becomes a taxi driver, criss-crossing the city in the hope of finding his daughter.
What we liked about the profession of taxi driver was that it’s inscribed within something so absorbing that Jay doesn’t have room for anything else. There’s something a bit monastic to the story. Jay lives alone in a stripped-back environment. One of our biggest inspirations was Le Samouraï by Jean-Pierre Melville, for its music, its continuity editing, but also for its screenplay, the character’s determination. His tendency to drive straight into a wall, in full conscience. They’re codes which we were very happy to re-use: Jef Costello’s empty apartment, an exotic pet…

How did you want to shoot Japan?
It may or may not be a good thing, but, as I said, I’m not in love with Japan. I didn’t want to film Japan picture-postcard-style, I wanted it be like Japanese people see it. That’s how Jay sees it. We couldn’t exoticize it. Our rule was  "no Mount Fuji". And finding a sento, a Japanese public bath, without Mount Fuji in the background is really hard! To make all of that possible, it was really important, in my mind, that we work with a Japanese art director.

What was the biggest challenge for you?
It’s so different making a film in Japan. A large proportion of the team were Japanese, so we had to find common ground between their way of doing things and ours. I also wanted to take things to a new level. It’s still my kind of film, my way of doing things, but I wanted a film that was a little more ambitious, in another country, another language; to move towards something more lyrical, perhaps. To find greater depth. In fact, I worked with a composer for the very first time. Beforehand, I saw music as a kind of crutch for creating emotion, in case I hadn’t done my job properly as a screenwriter or actor director. But there’s something really sensorial about images and music. As a filmmaker looking for emotion, I realised it was time I used all the tools available to me.

(Translated from French)