Here is your first look at Tran Anh Hung’s adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s “Norwegian Wood,” starring Kenichi Matsuyama, Rinko Kikuchi and Kiko Mizuhara.
Murakami’s novel is told mainly through flashbacks to a ’60’s coming-of-tale, that centers on student Toru Watanabe (Matsuyama) and his relationship with two women: the beautiful but fragile Naoko, played by “Babel” actress Kikuchi, and lively, outgoing Midori (Mizuhara).
Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood was previously revealed to be scoring the film after an award-wining effort on Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood.” As was the case with that score being based on Greenwood’s Popcorn Superhet Receiver, the score for “Norwegian Wood” will be based on a composition called Dogwood which the musician recently wrote for the BBC Concert Orchestra.
“I wrote this piece mostly in hotels and dressing rooms while touring with Radiohead,” Greenwood said of his work. “This was more practical than glamorous – lots of time sitting around indoors, lots of instruments about – and aside from picking up a few geographical working titles, I can’t think that it had any effect where, on tour, it was written.”
Here’s the full synopsis:
“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.
The film hits theaters in Japan in December but with no word any release anywhere else on the globe. Expect it to hit the festival scene beforehand though especially with Tran’s decorated history at Cannes and Venice with “The Scent Of The Green Papaya,” “Cyclo” and “The Vertical Ray Of The Sun.”
