“The Blind Willow and the Sleeping Woman” is a feature-length animated film adapted by musician and animation artist Pierre Foldes from six short stories by Haruki Murakami: “Frog Saves Tokyo,” “Birthday Girl,” “The Snake,” “The Wind-Up Bird and the Women of Tuesday,” “A UFO Lands in Kushiro,” and “The Blind Willow and the Sleeping Woman.” This is Pierre Foldes’ first animated feature film, and the first of Haruki Murakami’s works to be adapted into animation.
A few days after a certain big earthquake, a decisive rift has developed between a married couple… Komura (Isomura) and Kyoko (Genri). Kyoko continues to watch the news without saying a word, and Komura is confused by his wife. Kyoko then leaves Komura with a letter saying, “Living with you is like living with a lump of air,” and leaves him. At the same time, Katagiri (Tsukamoto), a colleague at the trust bank where Komura works, is being pushed around by his boss for almost defaulting on a loan. When he opens the door to his house with a gloomy feeling, he finds a giant “Frog-kun” there.
Frog (Furudate) tells Katagiri that an even bigger earthquake is coming, and asks him to fight alongside Earthworm, the cause of it. “I’m just an ordinary person. No one loves me. I don’t even know why I’m alive. There’s no way someone like me can save Tokyo,” Katagiri says, as he examines himself again and begins to cry.
Meanwhile, Kyoko is remembering her 20th birthday. The manager of the restaurant where she works part-time, whose health has suddenly worsened, asks her to deliver dinner to the owner who lives in the same building as the restaurant. The owner, whom Kyoko meets for the first time, invites Kyoko into his room and says, “On this special day when you turn 20, you happened to deliver a hot meal. That’s why I want to give you a present. A special gift for a special day.”
After Kyoko leaves, Komura is asked by his colleague Sasaki to deliver a small box to his sister in Hokkaido while he is on vacation. After delivering the box to Sasaki’s sister, Komura ends up spending the night with Sasaki’s friend Shimao at a love hotel.
People who were trapped in the past, people who didn’t even realize they were stuck, gradually come to terms with themselves as they wander through distant memories and dreams, and are slowly liberated. The voice of Akira Emoto, who plays the owner, asks, “Do you have a wish, young lady?” in a voice that is unclear as to whether it is a dream or reality, but which has a strange persuasiveness to it.
The production of the Japanese version was directed by Koji Fukada, and Pierre Foldes, who came to Japan, was present and supervised all recording. Foldes originally started his career as a musician, and although he does not understand Japanese, he is sensitive to pitch and dynamics, and supervised the dialogue as if it were music.
The cast also acted in accordance with the movements of the characters on screen, and the recording was done in a style where the microphone followed them, resulting in impressive use of whispered voices. Because the intonation and sound are different between English and Japanese, the Japanese version was completed after extremely delicate work such as matching the mouth of the picture with the dialogue and adjusting the overall tone of the sound.
The first animated feature film based on a novel by Haruki Murakami, “The Blind Willow and the Sleeping Woman,” will be released nationwide from July 26th at Eurospace in Tokyo and other venues.
The film depicts Murakami’s worldview, also known as “magic realism,” with the free sensibility that only animation can provide. It will be released in two versions, the original English version (with Japanese subtitles) and the Japanese version, so be sure to pay attention to the differences in the sound of each version.
“The Blind Willow and the Sleeping Woman” Opens
July 26th (Friday) at Eurospace and other theaters nationwide
Director and scriptwriter: Pierre Foldes, based on the original work by Haruki Murakami ((“Frog Saves Tokyo”, “Birthday Girl”, “The Snakehead”, “The Wind-Up Bird and the Women of Tuesday”, “A UFO Lands on Kushiro”, “The Blind Willow and the Sleeping Woman”))
[Original version]
Voice cast: Ryan Bommarito, Shoshana Bilder, Marcelo Arroyo, Scott Humphrey, Arthur Holden, Pierre Foldes
[Japanese version]
Voice cast: Hayato Isomura, Genri, Shinya Tsukamoto, Kanji
Furutachi, Aso Kiryu, Suzuharu Kawashima, Yusei Umetani, Ryo Iwase, Chika Uchida, Katsumi Toi, Mitsuru Hirata, Akira Emoto
Director: Koji Fukada Translation assistance: Motoyuki Shibata Sound director: Masaru Usui Supervisor: Pierre Foldes
2022 / 109 minutes / Co-production between France, Luxembourg, Canada and the Netherlands
Original title: “Saules Aveugles, Femme Endormie” / English title: “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman”
Distributors: Eurospace, Interfilm, New Deer, LesPros Entertainment
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