Cannes

About the film:
The Competition feature Map of the Sounds of Tokyo by Spanish director Isabel Coixet tells a story of love and vengeance in the Japanese megacity. Coixet recalls the genesis of her film: "Films, like tunes or poems, spring from strange encounters, from odd associations that can be completely incongruent but full of magic. In the case of Map of the Sounds of Tokyo, I “saw” the story (I don’t want to sound like some kind of visionary, but this is how I felt it happen) at Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. I suppose the smells of fresh tuna, seaweed and oysters, the shouting of the auctioneers, the scraping and shuffling of thousands of fish boxes dragged across the market floor and the peculiar effects of the fluorescent lighting at four o’clock in the morning had a great deal to do with it. Or the stony face of the girl neatly hosing the floor who was so adamant in her refusal to let me photograph her, showing a determination that is unusual for Japan."

"I knew I would tell this story of a woman – a hard, solitary, mysterious, wounded woman – who leads a double life: a fish market worker who cleans, hauls crates and occasionally carries out jobs as a hit-woman. And the story of a man, whose obsession are sounds, and who is silently in love with that woman, even though he knows that the very most he can expect from her is the sound of her breath, the sound of her heels down an empty alley and her conversations during her meetings with a man, of Spanish origin, towards whom she experiences an attraction that endangers the life she has led up until then as a loner. To this initial idea, my “vision” or whatever you want to call it, I added the story of a man who is unable to cope with the loss of his daughter, and is on a blind search for revenge that eventually leads to a tragic end."

"This is how Map of the Sounds of Tokyo was born. I was also influenced by the fascination I feel for contemporary Japanese culture and the atmosphere I find in the novels of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto as well as by my unconcealed addiction to wasabi and the almost tangible vibrations emanating from Tokyo during the night: a mixture of expectation, mystery, darkness and tenderness that leaves an indelible mark."

In 2005, Isabel Coixet was a member of the 18-filmmaker team - which also included Gus Van Sant, Walter Salles, and the Coen brothers – which produced the collective project Paris, Je T’aime, in which each director explored a different Paris arrondissement, or district.

Press conference:
The Spanish director Isabel Coixet explained her intentions in making her latest film,  Map of the Sounds of Tokyo  during the press conference today. Joining her on the podium were actors Rinko Kikuchi and Sergi López, as well as her producer Jaume Roures. Selected highlights follow.

Isabel Coixet on Japan:
The first time I went to Japan, some 15 years ago, I felt myself very much at home...I felt that the differences between the Japanese and the French or the Spanish were not as great as all that. My obsession has always been to try to the see what are the points of similarities between people; what are the aspects of humanity that we all share… I think that both the Catalans and the Japanese are obsessed with food.

Isabel Coixet on the city of Tokyo:
I love Japanese culture. I love classical Japanese literature; I love contemporary literature. I’m a great fan of many Japanese writers, Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto. I love Japanese food, fish dishes, everything. My company is called Miss Wasabi. Japan is a country in which I feel very much at home. I think the courtesy that is expressed, the way people get to know one another, it can be portrayed perhaps as an obstacle, a barrier, but for me, all these mannerisms and the way people make gestures with their heads, the respect they show for others, all this is important… The Tokyo that I love is the Tokyo of the more popular neighborhoods where you can discover a real local life.

Sergi López on working with Rinko Kikuchi :
Before I went there, I had a rather simplistic, a rather stupid, short-sighted image; I really wasn’t familiar with Japan. But now the image I have of Japan is very difficult to separate from the film itself. For me, the film is Tokyo, Isabel and Rinko Kikuchi. She’s somebody very difficult to forget; it was great, it was wonderful. Something happened that I still haven’t understood; it’s what happens when actors are together in a film. There’s something strange that always occurs. She doesn’t speak Catalan; I don’t speak Japanese, so we had to speak English to make ourselves understood. So it was a very imperfect form of English on both sides, and in fact, this encouraged us to act together. And I was absolutely astonished to see that Rinko was always present and followed my every word, every breath. So it was an immense experience that reconciles you with the idea of acting …that it can be natural.