CANNES 2008 Directors’ Fortnight
Monsieur Morimoto: A Japanese man in Paris
by Vitor Pinto
As yet another edition of Cannes nears the end, young French director Nicola Sorgana presented his second feature film this morning in the Directors' Fortnight. Monsieur Morimoto [+see also:
trailer
film profile] is an unpretentious comedy about an elderly Japanese painter living in Paris.
In the post-screening Q&A, the witty and visibly tired Sorgana stated his fascination for his lead actor, his Jean-Pierre Léaud, as he called Kenishi. A WWII survivor, Kenishi was already an old man when he came to France to be a painter. Sorgana’s camera follows him on his adventures in Paris, in his interactions with the people he encounters and in his attempts to retrieve a disappeared painting.
Deliberately going against convention, Sorgana said the film was made with the greatest possible freedom and that he worked against a “dictatorship of the script”.
“Those who decide the financing of films tend to prefer straightforward stories,” he added. “In France, we no longer have the right to be contradictory, as some of my characters are”.
The film, produced by Tricycle Production, does not yet have an international sales agent.
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