Japanese filmmaker Daishi Matsunaga faced a fresh challenge and a return to form when making Egoist, set to world premiere in Competition at Tokyo International Film Festival.
Like his directorial debut documentary Pyuupiru 2001-2008, the drama centres on sexual minorities in Japanese society.
It stars Ryohei Suzuki as a gay man and editor of a fashion magazine who falls for his personal trainer, played by Hio Miyazawa. The two begin dating, but things become complicated when the editor learns his new partner is involved in sex work.
Matsunaga was first pitched the project by producer Naomi Akashi in 2019 and was taken with both the film treatment by Kyoko Inukai and the original novel by Makoto Takayama, who based much of the novel on his own life.
“It really felt less like a work of fiction than a biography, something close to a documentary,” says Matsunaga. “It felt very personal.”
Although Takayama died in 2020, Matsunaga spoke to those close to him to better discover what parts of the book were fictional and which were real and to get a better feel for the writer as a person.
“A lot of that research made it into the screenplay,” says Matsunaga. But when producer Akashi suggested Ryohei Suzuki, one of Japan’s most popular actors, for the lead role, Matsunaga was not immediately sold.
“When I read the novel, I was imagining someone who looked a little less cool than Ryohei,” he says with a laugh. “But once I thought about it, I thought he could really pull it off,” says Matsunaga, who has known Suzuki for many years. “I thought the balance between him and Miyazawa would be perfect, too.”
To give the film the same documentary feel as the autobiographical novel, Matsunaga and his team mainly shot the film with handheld cameras and invited the actors to improvise. The director estimates that up to a third of the dialogue in the film was not in the script.
“The scenes where Suzuki’s character is drinking in the bar with his friends, for example, were all done in one take,” recalls Matsunaga. “We’d just give the actors keywords and let them speak. Aside from Ryohei, everyone (in those scenes) were non-professional actors, so doing that made more sense than giving them lines of dialogue.”
Matsunaga attributes his skill in communicating with his cast - professional or otherwise - in part to his background as an actor himself.
“I do think my background is an advantage, especially when actors are having trouble,” he says. “A director can say ‘more sadness’ or ‘more rage,’ but the problem for an actor is how to do that physically, how to pull that emotion out of yourself.”
Intimacy choreographer
Another key part of communication on set came in the form of an intimacy choreographer and LGBTQ+ inclusive director, two relatively new positions in Japanese filmmaking.
“Right now, the worldwide film industry is undergoing a movement to take these things seriously, so I thought it was only natural that we also do so,” says Matsunaga. “In Japan, there are still misunderstandings when it comes to sexual minorities, and I think it’s our duty to confront these issues and present them to audiences.”
While Egoist is a film about sexual minorities in Japan, it is also about economic disparity, as illustrated by the fiscal gap between the two leads.
“Suzuki’s character lives in an elegant apartment, while Miyazawa’s comes from a single mother household and is quite poor financially,” says Matsunaga. “I definitely had these economic themes in mind when choosing things like locations and costumes. I do wonder to what extent the Japanese audience will pick up on that theme. I have a feeling people from outside Japan will really get it.”
Looking ahead to future projects, Matsunaga says: “I don’t want to choose between the Japanese market and the foreign market. I want to keep trying new things in both. In Japan, I want to make films that can be both artistic and commercial. I strongly believe that films can be entertainment but also give people courage and hope.
“In that sense, I’m really looking forward to seeing how Egoist does. It’s the kind of film I became a director to make.”
Produced by Tokyo-based Robot Communications, sales of Egoist are handled by Nikkatsu and a theatrical release in Japan is scheduled for February 2023.
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