Director Ryosuke Hashiguchi’s first film in seven years, Three Stories of Love was revealed on October 28 as part of the 28th Tokyo International Film Festival’s Japan Now section.
 
Firstly, we made the title and then the project began as a film production by members of Hashiguchi’s personal workshop. The director reflected back with a bitter smile “I wanted to create a romance over a series of episodes but I thought we needed to start from zero and became perplexed. In the end, the screenplay took eight months and the members probably thought they’d been swindled.”
 
In the end, Hashiguchi settled on three main characters—a highway bridge inspector who lost his wife in a passerby killing, a housewife who is fed up with mundane lifestyle, and a gay lawyer who anguishes over the feelings he has for a friend—and spun a tale of their individual struggles and aspirations. While Ken Mitsuishi, Lily Franky and other veteran actors support them from the side “About 80 percent of the cast were workshop members and among them, there were some complete novices. If they were said to have done poorly, it would have been our failure, so it was important to maintain a balance to make it feel like they were all living in the same world.” he explained.
 
Hashiguchi’s 1992 directorial debut A Touch of Fever was harshly criticized by late film critic Nagaharu Yodogawa, who said to him “I saw the first scene and thought you were a genius but after that, it was not productive. You have no guts.” But directly afterwards, he received an honorable direction from Yodogawa by saying “If you’ve chosen to make a film once, keep going until the end. I trust you can accomplish it.”
 
The director spoke of his gratitude towards the late master. “It was fortunate for me to receive a precious advice. After his last film All Around Us, there were times when I thought this whole thing was stupid. But those words helped me rein in my feelings a number of times.” The director continued confidently “I elaborated to give 100% of my concept and I was conscious of how I portrayed the current situation in Japan. It’s easy to find the physical imperfection, while something missing in your heart isn’t. It was the depiction of unbearable feelings.”
 
Three Stories of Love will be screened at Tokyo Theatre Shinjuku from November 14 and subsequently nationwide.
 

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