"We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature."— Henry David Thoreau
Sion Sono swan dives into Shinjuku’s chaos
19 JANUARY 2017 JAPAN TIMES MARK SCHILLING
TOKYO (Japan Times) -- [Shinjuku Swan II (2017) - www.ss-2.jp] Celebrated abroad for films that mash up everything from extreme sex and gore to Christian imagery and classical music, Sion Sono has emerged as one of the most distinctive directors in Japanese cinema this century.His breakthrough came in 2001 with “Suicide Club,” in which 54 teenage girls kill themselves en masse, and he has since directed films such as “Love Exposure” (2008),a four-hour tour de force whose hero is an “upskirt” photographer, and “Himizu” (2011), a near-future dystopian drama themed on that year’s nuclear disaster.
At home, Sono’s biggest hit is “Shinjuku Swan,” a 2015 comic thriller set in the disreputable world of “scouts” — guys who roam the streets of Shinjuku and other entertainment districts recruiting women for the sex trade. Based on a best-selling manga series by Ken Wakui that has generated 38 paperback volumes, “Shinjuku Swan” earned a solid ¥1.33 billion at the box office.
Now Sono and producer Mataichiro Yamamoto, whose credits include the 1985 Paul Schrader drama “Mishima” and the 2009 Takashi Miike actioner “Crows Zero II,” have teamed up again for the sequel, “Shinjuku Swan II,” which opens on Jan. 21.
This time our hero, the good-hearted and two-fisted Tatsuhiko (Go Ayano), is swept up in a turf war between his scout team, Burst, whose boss has decided to expand into Yokohama, and a Yokohama team called Wizard, which is led by the violently explosive Taki (Tadanobu Asano). As the two teams clash — and Wizard mounts a counter-offensive on Burst’s home ground — the action and intrigue escalate, with powerful yakuza bosses upping the life-or-death ante.
Fans of both the manga and the first film will find many of their favorite characters in the sequel (though viewers new to the story may initially feel lost in the on-screen crowd), while the action scenes, supervised by the Hong Kong-trained Kenji Tanigaki, are larger in scale and impact. Sono has an obvious affinity for the material — his 1995 “Bad Film” and 2014 “Tokyo Tribe” also feature big pitched battles between rival gangs — but his signature style and concerns are harder to spot.
Speaking to The Japan Times just before the film’s gala premiere at Roppongi Hills Toho Cinemas, Yamamoto says that he’d always planned to make a sequel.
“With a big manga like that you can’t tell the whole story in just one film,” he says. “But it depended on whether the fans found the first film interesting. If a lot of fans didn’t come to see it, financially we couldn’t justify making the second installment.”
With a sly glance in Yamamoto’s direction, Sono says the first film’s success didn’t surprise him in the slightest. Read More
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