"Missing" Director Keisuke Yoshida fills in what he wants to say through his filmography [Director's Interview Vol. 404]

It's mean but kind, funny but tear-jerking. Ishihara Satomi approached the genius director Yoshida Keisuke, who is able to create a wide range of emotions in one work, to make "Missing." A young mother continues to search for her missing daughter. This heavy story depicts her days of pain with no end in sight, and Ishihara Satomi, who was prepared to give up her career up until now, delivers a passionate performance that reveals the torments she goes through both physically and mentally.

"Missing" was born from his previous work " Intolerance " (21), which won numerous film awards, and became a masterpiece that seemed to declare that Director Yoshida had reached the next level. But what exactly is this next level that outsiders perceive as being? We spoke to Director Yoshida himself about his current situation.

*Director Yoshida's "Yoshi" is a Japanese word that means "good."

Synopsis of "Missing"

A young girl goes missing in a certain town. Despite all efforts, three months have passed without her being found. Saori (Ishihara Satomi), a mother who continues to wait for her daughter Miu's return, is anxious as the public's interest gradually fades. Due to the difference in their interest in her and her husband Yutaka (Munetaka Aoki), they are constantly fighting. She relies on Sunada (Nakamura Tomoya), a reporter from a local TV station, who is the only one who continues to cover the story. Meanwhile, when it is revealed that Saori had attended a concert by her favorite idol at the time of her daughter's disappearance, she becomes the target of slanderous criticism on the Internet as a "mother who abandons her child." Exposed to the deception and curious eyes of the world, Saori's behavior gradually becomes excessive, and she loses her heart to the point of playing the role of the "tragic mother" that the media wants her to play. Meanwhile, Sunada is ordered by the station's higher-ups to do interviews that will arouse public interest in Saori and her younger brother Keigo (Mori Yusaku) in order to boost ratings. Even so, Saori continues to cling to the world with the sole desire to "see her daughter."

Index

• From "Intolerance" to "missing"
• Filling in what I want to say through my filmography
• The goal is to let things happen
• Yoshida Keisuke and Ishihara Satomi, like downtown and Minato Ward (lol)
• The right amount of small jokes

From "Intolerance" to "missing"

Q: You were already talking about "Missing" when " Intolerance " was released. The theme is like an extension of " Intolerance ," or is it just a brief variation?

Yoshida: Yes. I was already writing the script the day after " Intolerance " wrapped up filming. I was joking about making a trilogy about Gamagori (where " Intolerance " was filmed), but the next day, a state of emergency (due to COVID-19) was declared, and I couldn't edit " Intolerance " for a while. So I had a month to spare, and I shot " Blue" (21) and " Intolerance " back to back, and although " God Seeks Return " (22) hadn't started filming yet, the scripts I had in my hands were being filmed one after another, so I thought I had to write a new one. So I wondered what the second part of the Gamagori trilogy should be, and started writing something similar to a sequel to " Intolerance ".

So in the early script, Soeda (Furuta Arata) and Nogi (Fujiwara Kisetsu) from " Intolerance " appeared, and I made Aoki (Muneto) a member of the fisheries association because there was a part where he had a fight with Soeda. The reason why a mandarin orange farm appears this time is because I was eating nothing but mandarin oranges in Gamagori when I was filming " Intolerance " (laughs).

Q: So the concept for "Missing" took shape while you were filming " Intolerance "?

Yoshida: Well, two days before I returned to Tokyo from Gamagori, I happened to see a mixer truck driving by, and I suddenly thought, "Mixer trucks are great." The image of a "mixer truck driver who wants to run away from something" came to mind, and I wondered what he was running away from, and suddenly I thought, "It must be the older sister's child who she was looking after has gone missing." So I came up with a story about a mixer driver who lost his older sister's child because of him, and I started running from there.

I usually start with a light heart, and as I write it becomes a completely different story. It doesn't matter what the starting point is. But in the end, I think that the older sister who is looking for her child is the main character, rather than the driver of the mixer truck where her child disappeared. If that's the case, I think that her husband must be having a hard time, and I somehow started to see the TV station that reports it as part of the set.

So when I gave the rough first draft to Kawamura Mitsutsune (a film producer who passed away in 2022), he said something malicious like, "This is great, let's do this! I want to bash the TV station!" (laughs) No, I don't have that intention, but we talked about how it might be more interesting if we expanded on the TV station part, and that's how the final script was created.

"Missing" ©︎2024 "missing" Film Partners

Q: Both " The Intolerance " and "Missing" are stories that begin with the loss of someone important.

Yoshida: Yes, how do we reconcile that?

Q: " Intolerance " is a work that reflects your experience of losing the screenwriter Nishihara Ryo, with whom you had worked since the early days, suddenly to illness in 2016. I think that your relationship with Nishihara was also the basis for " Basha-san and Big Mouth " (2013) and "Inu-saru" (2018). However, this time, even though the theme is connected, the director's sense of his personal life was weaker, and it didn't feel like the film was about Nishihara.

Yoshida: Yes. I feel like I've come to terms with Nishihara-san's death by creating " Intolerance ." I feel like I've been able to heal myself from a certain kind of wound, but I think there are some people who can't do that. " Intolerance " is about something that can't be undone, about coming to terms with someone who's already dead, but in the environment of "Missing," if you come to terms with it, it becomes like "Does that mean I've given up?"

I think the theme of this work was thinking about the pain of searching for someone who is gone, and how to find light beyond that. When you have to keep running, you don't know where to breathe. I wanted to make a work for people like that. If there is a light that these people can see, it's probably different from the light they see in " Intolerance ".

Filling in what I want to say through my filmography