Yim Ho is back in Berlin for the third-year running with Kitchen, his adaptation of Banana Yoshimoto's hit novel. Richard James Havis spoke to him in Hong Kong about the book, the girl and the film
It's the third year running that Hong Kong's Yim Ho has had a film at Berlin. Last year saw him awarded both Best Director and the Critics' Prize for The Sun Has Ears, a story set in the chaotic Warlord era of Republican China. 1995 saw him in Forum with his clever murder mystery The Day The Sun Turned Cold. This year Yim is back in competition with Kitchen, a screen adaptation of Japanese writer Banana Yoshimoto's international hit novel. How did Kitchen come about?
I read the book in 1994 when I was working on the music for The Day The Sun Turned Cold in Japan. I was very moved by the emotion and feeling that the story conveyed. I admired the simple structure of the book. I thought it was good material for a film: a love story which contained something more meaningful. So I bought the rights for the book.
It's quite a radical adaptation of the novel, isn't it? For a start, the book is a first-person narrative about a young girl coming to terms with death. You shift the narrative perspective to her male friend.
If I had adapted it from the girl's point of view, most of the philosophical ideas would have been expressed via a voiceover. I tried this with the first version of the script, and I found the result boring. So I decided to ask the audience to identify with the boy, Louie [played by Jordan Chan]. When Aggie [the girl, played by Yasuko Tomita] comes into his world, the audience and Louie can see the pain she has, but not actually feel it. Since they cannot feel her pain, they can't fully experience what she is going through.
But when the boy's mother dies, the film becomes an emotional rollercoaster: the audience identifies with the boy, and rides the rollercoaster with him. Together, the audience and the boy realise something about life. This way, we bring the audience and the boy to the girl's level of perception. Instead of hammering them with messages, we lead them.
We ask them to identify with the boy, go through his experience, and reach a philosophical conclusion. Which is that it's through emotional pain that people are capable of change.
You have also moved the setting from Japan to Hong Kong. Did this pose any problems?
No. It's contemporary story, so I didn't have much trouble adapting it to Hong Kong. The girl's sensitivity in the story is very 'Asian' - Hong Kong is also an Asian city, so it wasn't difficult.
I only met Banana [Yoshimoto] once, but in that short meeting we set the tone of the film. The book is humorous, light-heated and youthful. So we agreed the film should be like that. We didn't want it to be preachy, even though the story is philosophical. That was the criteria for selecting the material and adding new scenes for enriching the characters and structuring the screenplay.
It's not a conventional narrative. You combine fragments of the past and present with some atmospheric visual punctuations. It's as if you are seeking to visually represent the psychology of your characters rather than tell a story.
Although the film is called Kitchen, it's not about eating or food. It's about one's desire for life. In the very first shot, I introduce the audience to this concept: a nose comes out of the water. The film is about perception, about senses. I prepare the audience psychologically from the start. By the mixture of picture and sound, I'm making the audience feel what has happened. I'm telling them, don't just read this from the pictures - feel it.
It seems you are trying to draw out associative feelings from the viewer: it's as if you've taken a literary text and adapted it as if it were a poem.
Yes, that's exactly it. I try to draw out all of the associative memories from the audience. In the dance scene and the death scene, all the images are there to call out the memories from the viewer.
Aggie is Chinese in your film, but you've chosen Japanese actress Yasuko Tomita to play her. Why is this?
It was her face. She is very pretty and very sweet. But sad too. Sweet and sad at same time. Very few film actresses have these qualities. I though they were very suitable qualities for this role.
Some people have commented that the girl is too Japanese to play a Chinese girl - they say her mannerisms are too Japanese. But I purposely didn't try to tone down her Japanese mannerisms. I though it was interesting to have a Chinese girl with Japanese mannerisms.
How does it feel to be in competition at Berlin two years running?
I'm very excited to be back.
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