i once had a girl

“I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me.”

The melancholy tune and sentiment of this classic Beatles song seems to have taken the life of Toru Watanabe (Kenichi Matsuyama), who is similarly uncertain as to how he should view his relationships. At heart, a quiet and serious young Tokyo college student in 1969, Watanabe, is deeply devoted to his first love, Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi), a beautiful and introspective young woman. But their mutual passion is made by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Watanabe lives with the influence of death everywhere, while Naoko feels as if some integral part of her has been permanently lost. On the night of Naoko’s 20th birthday, they finally made love to each other. However, shortly thereafter Naoko decided to quit college and become a recluse. It is at that time Midori (Kiko Mizuhara) – a girl who is everything that Naoko is not: outgoing, vivacious, supremely self-confident – marches into Watanabe's life and he has to choose between his future and his past.

So they are making Norwegian Wood into a movie. It's opening in Japan in December 2010. I am curious but scared. It's like making Catcher In The Rye. The director is a French-Vietnamese guy (Tran Anh Hung, Scent of Green Papaya) whom I am not familiar with. Why didn't they have a Japanese director tackle this? But I shouldn't be a nationalist. If the guy's talented, it really doesn't matter.

Good signs: I like the movie stills I have seen so far. And Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead is doing the score. Check out this short behind-the-scene video.

The actor portraying one of my favorite fictional characters of all time, Toru Watanable, is Kenichi Matsuyama. Naoko is played by Rinki Kikuchi of Babel. And Midori is played by Kiko Mizuhara. I think I kinda see them in the roles.



Consider this my most anticipated film of 2010.