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‘She Taught Me Serendipity’ Director Ohku Akiko Reframes the Boy-Meets-Girl Formula: ‘He’ll Have to Remember How He Hurt Someone’
Ohku Akiko’s Tokyo competition title "She Taught Me Serendipity" only superficially fits in with the director's signature romantic drama genre style.
That is a flavor Ohku has made her own through a succession of films that blend comedy and pathos, relatable protagonists and universal themes that have appealed to audiences worldwide. Based on a novel by comic Fukutoku Shusuke, her latest, Ohku says in an interview at the Tokyo International Film Festival ‘s main Hibiya Midtown venue, “is more autobiographical than usual – I feel I’m telling my story.” But instead of the twenty-something heroines who have centered many of her previous films, including her 2017 Tokyo audience award winner “Tremble All You Want,” her protagonist in “Serendipity” is a nerdy male college student, called Konishi, played by Hagiwara Riku. Konishi, however, shares screen time with two strongly individual women – Kawai Yuumi’s Hana, a lonely-looking classmate who more than matches him in the oddity department and seems to be his soulmate, and Ito Aoi’s Sacchan, a budding musician who works with him at a public bath and has a secret crush on him.
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