Director Yuki Kobayashi Wraps Filming on 'The Sugar Baby'
Kobayashi's return to feature filmmaking after five years tackles the real-world social dynamics of Kabukicho through a fictional, allegorical lens rather than a docudrama.
Reporting from 1 sources: Cinema Today.
Director Yuki Kobayashi has completed filming on his first feature film in five years, 'The Sugar Baby', set in Kabukicho. The film stars Midori Nagatsuki as a girl who takes money from men and Kojin Serizawa as the man she targets. Kobayashi stated the film is not a direct adaptation of the 'Itadaki Girls Riri-chan' incident.
Director Yuki Kobayashi has wrapped filming on 'The Sugar Baby', his first feature film in five years. The movie is set in Kabukicho but builds the location from scratch in Yokohama, Gotemba, and Utsunomiya as a symbolic space for modern Japanese desires and loneliness. Kobayashi emphasized the film is not a docudrama of the 'Itadaki Girls Riri-chan' incident, though he has been confronting that subject matter for years. He described the film as 'a prayer for the loneliness and frustration contained within it.'
Midori Nagatsuki plays Juri, a girl who lives by taking money from men, and Kojin Serizawa plays Masaru, the middle-aged man whose heart and money she takes. Nagatsuki said she believed only she could play the role. Serizawa recalled feeling guilt reading the script, as if he had read something he should not have. Filming began April 22.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.