Yakushima’s Illusion [+lire aussi :
critique
interview : Naomi Kawase
fiche film], selected in competition at the Locarno Film Festival, tackles the sensitive issue of organ transplants and the disappearance of thousands of people every year in Japan. Naomi Kawase explains how these two subjects are connected and the importance of speaking through film rather than with words.

Cineuropa: Where does your interest in organ transplants come from, and why did you decide to address this topic via fiction?
Naomi Kwase: The idea originated with the issue of people disappearing. Here in Japan, we see thousands of cases of people disappearing every year, which we call “evaporation”. That issue came before the subject of organ transplants. I never wanted to explore it in documentary form. In terms of people disappearing, Japanese law states that when someone goes missing, their family can actually declare them dead seven years after their disappearance, which is different from most places in the West. When it comes to the idea of death, if a person’s heart is still beating, Japanese families have the choice to decide whether that person is dead or alive, even if their brain has stopped functioning. As with people who disappear, family members have control over the death certificate. I wanted to give a fresh and more objective perspective on these issues through the character of Corry.

How did you choose your lead actress, Vicky Krieps?
We had five candidates for the role who had been introduced to me through my producer and my agent in France. Vicky felt really unique to me. There were some other very talented people, but somehow Vicky seemed more organic, more natural. The energy she had was very attractive to me. She stayed in Kobe to prepare for the role before shooting, and she also interacted with the children in the hospital.

On the subject of the lead character, Corry, it’s clear from the beginning of the film, at least to a French speaker, that she’s not a “pure” Parisian: her accent isn’t from Paris, and it’s only halfway through the film that we discover she grew up in Luxembourg with her grandparents. Her multiple origins, the fact that she speaks French with an accent that’s hard to pin down and that she communicates with her colleagues in French, English and sometimes Japanese, all make her character even more mysterious and almost elusive. Would you agree?
In response, I should say that, at the beginning, Corry was supposed to speak in English, not French. But as the film ended up being produced with France, the majority of it had to be in French. That's why we decided to have her speak in French, and it was halfway through the project that I learned from the translator that her accent wasn’t Parisian. I was quite surprised, and I tried to work with the situation as best I could. I made use of the different backgrounds that Vicky Krieps has, the fact she was born in Luxembourg but lived in Berlin. I hope the mysteriousness of the character that you referred to ended up being a positive thing.

The issue of communication, or rather the difficulty of communicating, seems to be a recurring theme in your films. In this film in particular, the mix of languages is particularly evident, and even when people speak the same language, they seem to struggle to truly express what they think in words. Where does this interest come from? Does your personal experience have anything to do with it?
I do feel there are differences in how people communicate verbally. Maybe people don’t say everything they’re thinking in Japan. Whereas, in France, I feel people say everything and more. For that reason, I started to feel lost over what people really wanted to say and what I was supposed to understand. At the same time, there are people I work with who aren’t Japanese: the editor I’ve been working with since 2007 is a Lebanese person living in France, and the sound designer I’ve been working with for a long time is French, and I have no problem communicating with them, they seem to have great sensitivity. It’s possible that people misunderstand each other through spoken language, but it’s also possible for us to understand each other through filmmaking. I feel we shared the language of filmmaking. There aren't many misunderstandings with this kind of communication. I think the sensitivity and emotions that are part of our work go beyond spoken language.