With the Tokyo International Film Festival now past -- it ran this year from October 23 to 31 -- the films premiered in its Special Screenings section are already filling theatres and signaling what looks to be a prosperous holiday season for Japanese movies.
Opening on October 30, the comedy University of Laughs, the supernatural family drama Ima Ai ni Yukimasu and Yoji Yamada's new period drama The Hidden Blade topped Pia entertainment magazine's weekly audience satisfaction survey.
Based on a hit 1996 play by Koki Mitani (Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald, Our House) and set in 1940, University of Laughs pits a stern-faced police censor (Koji Yakusho) against a cringing-but-stubborn playwright (Goro Inagaki) -- and scored a chart-topping 92.5 points.
Not far behind was Ima Ai no Yukimasu, a tearjerker about a woman, a year dead, who returns in the flesh to her husband and young son -- but remembers nothing about them. Directed by newcomer Hironobu Doi, the film is the latest in a line of so-called "pure love" dramas that have been reeling in Japanese moviegoers, including the $80 million smash Crying Out for Love in the Centre of the World.
Third is The Hidden Blade -- the TIFF opening film and Yamada's follow-up to The Twilight Samurai, which swept the Japanese Academy Awards for 2002 and was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar. The new film, about a low-ranking samurai who falls in love with a family servant -- and is ordered to kill a close friend -- resembles The Twilight Samurai narratively and stylistically -- and looks likely to repeat its box office success.
And Hollywood? The best the biggest new Hollywood opener, Tom Cruise's Collateral, could manage was ninth on the Pia chart. Distributor UIP, however, is proclaiming it a hit, with a two-day opening weekend gross of $4 million on 303,738 admissions. That is 15% better than Cruise's Vanilla Sky, which went on to earn $31 million in Japan. But the local competition looks strong -- and the battle of the Christmas box office could well Kerry-Bush all over again.
