FEFF 19 and CG Entertainment decided to pay tribute to the great Japanese director and will present the restored version of major cult film Branded to Kill as a world premiere in Udine!
UDINE – With the passing of Suzuki Seijun we have lost one of the great international filmmakers, who will be sorely missed by the Far East Film Festival, that in previous months had prepared, on the occasion of its 19th edition (21st– 29th April), a dedication to the director in collaboration with CG Entertainment. More precisely, a special tribute to the Suzuki’s most famous title, Branded to Kill, which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary since its release and which Udine’s festival will screen in a wonderful version restored by Criterion (in collaboration with Nikkatsu) as a world premiere.
FEFF 19, bidding farewell to Suzuki Seijun, will also present the brand new box set from CG Entertainment containing Branded to Kill in DVD and Blu-ray, plus the book Time and Place are Nonsense by Tom Vick (a guest at last year’s edition of the festival). A monographic DVD box set with 5 films (Youth of the Beast, Tokyo Drifter, Detective Bureau, The Woman Sharper, Fighting Elegy) will also be available for purchase.
Branded to Kill, a film revered by Quentin Tarantino, who has on many occasions mentioned it as a source of inspiration, is without a doubt one of the biggest cult pictures by Nikkatsu Action.
A yakuza movie loved also by Jim Jarmusch and widely regarded as an absolute masterpiece of the Absurd! Back in 2005, Udine’s FEFF organised a retrospective centred around Japanese film company Nikkatsu and hosted Joe Shishido, main actor in Branded to Kill. Here are the eloquent and ironic words of the Japanese star (from No Borders, No Limits: Nikkatsu Action Cinema, written by Mark Schilling for the FEFF): «That was a great movie - for something incomprehensible. A few Japanese understood it, like the members of the Waseda University Film Study Circle. It was popular with them, but no one came to see it. I mean no one.».
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He made his initial foray onto the directorial scene with a duo of short films, Sans regrets (1996) and Je t’aime (1998), before collaborating with Jean-Christophe Pagnac two years later on Avalanche, a terse portrayal of a young, drug-addled couple, produced as part of the French anthology film Drug Scenes, a composite of 24 short French-language films centring on the theme of drug abuse. That same year, the actor-turned- director returned with the 10-minute- long comedy, J’peux pas dormir… starring Isabelle Carré, Vincent Elbaz and his prior collaborator Jean- Christophe Pagnac, following a young Antoine’s doggedly unabashed endeavour to reconcile with his ex-girlfriend, Julie, after a year long separation by simply returning to her apartment as if nothing had changed – despite the obvious presence of her new boyfriend sleeping in front of the television.
Canet’s temporary departure from his trademark comedic tone is reversed with his return to more familiar terrain in the endearingly funny drama, Little White Lies (2010), an exploration of the unavoidability of pain and grief in emotionally intricate relationships as a group of longtime friends decide to resume their vacation plans despite a friend’s hospitalization as a result of a near-fatal accident. Starring a stellar ensemble cast – François Cluzet (his return after Tell No One), Marion Cotillard, Benoît Magimel, Gilles Lellouche, Jean Dujardin and more – the film portrays the inevitable breakdown that occurs when their secrets and regrets threaten to erupt – a subtly transfixing, genre-bending, emotional-cartwheel that gained a nomination for an Audience Award at the European Film Awards.
The director swiftly followed-up the star-studded feature with a brief return to short-length productions with the release of Ivresse (2013), a stylistic, substance abuse public announcement created in partnership with French-based organizations L’Association Ferdinand and le Fondation VINCI Autoroutes – starring Juliette Dol and Sébastien Magne – which tells the truncated story of a young couple’s pivotal life moments, from their first encounter to an event that irrevocably shatters both of their lives. Currently in cinemas in France, Canet’s latest feature, Rock ‘n Roll, an irreverent, tongue-in- cheek meta-comedy narrating the director’s experiences (Canet plays himself in the film) as he struggles to come to terms with the apparent fact that he is not the audience-attracting film star that he was in his younger years, portrays his brazen attempts to prove his naysayers wrong by shaking up his image with the help of his partner, Marion Cotillard (also playing herself in the film).
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