interview with director tetsuya nakashima

“When I first read this novel, I knew I could be friends with Momoko.”
Tetsuya Nakashima

Q: What part of the novel  “Shimotsuma Story (English Title; Kamikaze Girls)” by Novala Takemoto made you interested in making it into the movie?

First of all, I liked the character of Momoko. She is such an odd heroine being cold, wicked and a little venomous with her own view of the world. I thought it would be worth challenging to make a movie about this type of character. I don't know if this movie can be called a 'teen movie', but I am not interested in most of the typical “right” main characters in teen movies.

Q: You don't like characters of good behavior?

I'm not attracted to those who always say “right” things and they think they are “right.” I cannot be a friend with those people. I am always attracted to someone who spews venom, who assumes a challenging attitude or who has a glaring defect. So when I first read this novel, I knew I could be a friend with Momoko.  I was not trying to make a 'teen movie' intended for young audience but just wanted to make a movie about somebody I liked a lot.

Q: Why did you cast Kyoko Fukada as your favorite character, Momoko?

Momoko strolls around her hometown of Shimotsuma in that outstanding Lolita outfits and doesn't care at all about how people in town think of her. She has self-absorbed thinking and goes “I don't care if people don't like me.” We can call her 'strong-willed', but it also can be her weakness. I think that's the good point of the story. If this story was something focusing only on the strong part of her personality doing fine whatever happens, I don't think I found it interesting. Momoko's weakness is her charm as well, which  is that she cannot live without the barrier to protect her. I thought that Kyoko would be perfect for this character, since she also contains something deep inside herself which we cannot peek into. I believed she could express Momoko's feelings very well without showing her weakness too obviously.

Q: How about casting of Anna Tsuchiya for the role of Ichigo?

I had no idea of who is confronting Momoko played by Kyoko, so I met Anna through the audition. Actually I didn't know Anna until then despite her popularity as a model. But I saw her and thought she will be very good partner of Kyoko's.  I believed Anna had an interesting energy to shake Kyoko up, so I wanted to see how they affect one another on the shoot. That resulted on the perfect match.

Q: Other actors are also interesting, they play so funny, and it’s almost over the top. How about their acting?

I told them to do over the top, never hold up. (Laugh) Actually it is very hard to keep up such an over-the-top tension in a movie. It could make the movie fall apart. But this time I believed that we could make something that allows actors to do a bit far and enjoy themselves doing that.

Q: Did anyone make you rather surprised by doing so?

Yes, Ryoko Shinohara, who played Momoko's mother, challenged on this role with an incredible aura which was beyond my expectation. It was a joyful surprise. She does something that nobody expects. For example, there is a scene in which she was up on stage for the Beauty Pageant appearing her beautiful proportion to the audience, but when we were shooting this scene, Ryoko somehow came up with a cross-eyed face.

I couldn't help laughing so hard, but she was like “What's so funny?” because it was her acting choice based on her characterization of Momoko's mother. (Laugh) That taught me what kind of mom she was trying to do and also there were so many possibilities we can try. I wasn't brave enough to use that take, thought…(Laugh)

Also, I was inspired by other actors' challenges, such as Katsuhisa Namase's (playing Manager of Pachinko Parlor) make up and his unique acting or Sadao Abe's(playing a Yanki Ryuji) funny movement with his head. Basically I asked them to try anything they like first, and gave it a shot if it worked well.

Q: Do you work in the same way with your crew as well?

No, it's different. As to the images, I strongly insist on what I want. I make  storyboards myself. Depending on the situation, sometimes we couldn't shoot as exactly as it is on the storyboards, but still tried to stick with shot lists. Especially this book gave me some sorts of rhythm running through the whole story,  so it helped me a lot in making shot lists and editing with no worries.

Q: It was an interesting choice to insert Anime sequence in it.

This story is basically to be told from Momoko's point of view, so there was so much freedom to play with images as they are the views of Momoko's world. Meanwhile, the legend of Himiko which is to be told by Ichigo, is not something that Momoko takes serious. So I decided to deliver it in a style of gag cartoon, as a metaphor of the fact Momoko is mocking it as a stupid story.

Q: There was a shot that reminds me of some scenes from American Movies.

I think it is because of the shots of clouds in the sky. Actually I like clouds a lot, they make me feel happy somehow. We could have a lot of nice shots of the clouds in this movie. Some clouds are half-shadowed and look almost  like what appears in John Ford's Western Movie. 

Q: That's the reason. Any message for the fans of this movie?

I made this movie hoping simply to entertain the audience, so it would be wonderful if they could enjoy themselves in watching it. It was really a tough work to shoot this high-tension movie only in a month. I remember we had many staff broken down from overwork and even Kyoko couldn't sleep enough at all. We did all this tough work only to make this movie entertaining for the audience, which is none of their business though…(Laugh). Anyways, it would be awesome if people just laugh at all the foolish things we did, enjoyed it and feel something from it.

(Interviewer/ Aya Yokomori, Writer)

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Check out additional interviews with:

Actress Kyoko Fukada
Actress Anna Tsuchiya
Composer Yoko Kanno
BABY, THE STARS SHINE BRIGHT Designer Akinori Isobe