The Tokyo competition title of Oko Akiko’s “Chance Taught Me” seems to fit the director’s signature romantic drama style perfectly. This is the flavor Oko created with a series of films that blended comedy and pathos, relatable heroes and universal themes that appealed to audiences around the world.
Based on the novel by comedian Fukutoku Shusuke, her latest work, “It’s more autobiographical than usual — I feel like I’m telling my story,” Oko says in an interview at the Tokyo International Film Festival’s main Hibiya Midtown venue. But instead of the twenty-something heroines who have centered many of her previous films, including her 2017 Tokyo Audience Award winner Tremble All You Want, Serendipity’s protagonist is a nerdy college student named Konishi, He is played by Hagiwara. Rico. “I had a male lead in a short film, but I had never had a feature film before this one,” Oko says.
However, Konishi shares screen time with two strong women – Kawaii Yumi’s Hana, a lonely-looking classmate who matches him in the weirdness department and appears to be his soulmate, and Ito Aoi’s Sachan, a budding musician who works with him. In the public bathroom and has a secret crush on him. “In a boy-meets-girl movie like this, usually only the boy side is portrayed, but I didn’t like that,” Oko says. “I wanted to show the essence of the girls he meets and how hurt they are by the boy.”
In the case of the passionate but sensitive Sacchan, Oko expressed this essence by writing a lengthy monologue that Ito delivers in one go. “It was those long lines by Sakshan that first attracted me in the novel, so I wrote the script without changing the flavor of the novel,” Oko says. “In fact, I could tell when I first read it that I didn’t want to change it.” It also helps make “Serendipity” a formula-defying landmark.
The message of the film is, “You have to live your life aware of the fact that you’ve hurt people,” Oko says. She continues, “In the novel, Konishi marries, but I don’t know what will happen to him in the future.” “What I do know is that he will remember how he hurt someone. That’s the thing you never forget.”
After the film’s world premiere at TIFF on Tuesday, Aoko says she spent about an hour signing autographs and talking with fans. “A girl from China told me that this day was the best kept secret of her life,” she says, without going into details.