In the new Brazilian action movie Yakuza Princess, singer MASUMI makes her film debut as Akemi, a young woman in Brazil who is thrust into a world of crime and adventure when a man with no memory (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) on the run wanders into her life. Akemi comes to learn that she's actually an heiress to the yakuza, with her pursuers determined to ensure that she never claims it. For Yakuza Princess, filmmaker Vicente Amorim sits in the director's chair.
Amorim has previously directed films such as Middle of the World and Dirty Hearts, along with directing episodes of such TV shows as Copa Hotel and Romance Policial: Espinosa. For Yakuza Princess, Amorim brings a dark flair to the film's story told on the run and a visceral impact to the movie's katana-slashing action scenes.
We speak to Vicente Amorim on the making of Yakuza Princess, how he cast MASUMI as the film's heroine Akemi, and the challenges of adapting the movie's story from the graphic novel that runs parallel to it, Samurai Shiro.
Screen Rant: How did Yakuza Princess first come about?
Vicente Amorim: It started four or five years ago when I wrapped a slasher movie I did called Motorrad, and the characters were created by Danilo Beyruth, who is a graphic novel author here in Brazil. I had a meeting with him and the producer, Tubaldini Shelling, and they asked me if I'd like to direct a movie that was based on a character that was still in creation, which was called Samurai Shiro. I said, "That's great, but do we have a script or anything?" And they said, "No, the graphic novel's not ready yet." So, it started off in tandem really.
We started writing the script for the movie at the same time that the graphic novel was being written. Of course, the script for the graphic novel and the graphic novel itself were ready in about a year, and we only started really working on the final script after that. But it was really interesting to work with Danilo on the characters and also on deciding on how the movie would be somewhat or at least a little different from the graphic novel, and where and why that should happen. So that's how it came about, it was a very, very interesting process.
Since the film and the graphic novel were developed alongside each other, how did the film end up charting its own course from the graphic novel?
Vicente Amorim: Well, the graphic novel is called Samurai Shiro, and the movie's called Yakuza Princess. I think that sort of sums up where each one took its own path in being absolutely the same story, but the weights were very different. The movie is about Akemi and her coming of age and how she becomes the new boss to a yakuza empire, whereas the graphic novel tells us how Shiro helps her become such a boss. Story-wise, that is the main difference. It's not a difference in plot, not a difference really in character, but in weight of character within the plot.
You also had MASUMI as Akemi, and this was her first movie. How did you decide she was your choice for Akemi?
Vicente Amorim: It was hard. We'd been looking for about a year, and we needed a Japanese or Japanese-American actress who could speak English and Japanese and would have notions of martial arts, and have the right age to play 21. We were looking into maybe changing the story a bit, maybe she didn't speak so much English, or so much Japanese. We were starting to very warily get ready to make compromises when I saw a self-tape that was sent to us by MASUMI, and I called the producer and said, "We have to look no more. Here is our Akemi." We went on FaceTime or whatever it was back then, and I auditioned and re-auditioned her, and we were very lucky to find someone as talented as MASUMI to play Akemi.
I spoke to MASUMI as well, and she was new to sword training and martial arts. So, what was the process like of training and preparing for the action scenes in the movie?
Vicente Amorim: She has the hidden advantage that she doesn't brag too much about, which is that she's married to Kenny Leu, who is a martial arts specialist, and a kung fu champion and swordsman. He was a great help during the process. We had, of course, a fight choreographer and a sword specialist, Ricardo Rizzo, who is a five-time kung fu champion, karate champion, and katana specialist who worked with MASUMI for a few months before we started shooting. So, really, it's about rehearsing, that's what it's about. She's doing eighty, ninety percent of her own stunts and fighting, and we only used a double when it didn't matter when she was so far away that I wanted to give her a break, but otherwise, she did her own stuff.
It's all about hard work, she is the hardest working actress I have ever come across, and she's a natural. She worked like crazy to make this happen every day and on her days off, and she'd call me and say, "Well, listen, this move isn't working", and she helped me make the moves better and more interesting and it was great. That's what it's about. I had in my mind very clearly what I wanted from each scene, and I made little sizzle reels of each scene and used scenes from other movies as references, but in the end, it's about what the actor can do, and she could do it all.
With Yakuza Princess having a lot of action and sword fights, what were some of the most memorable moments during the production?
Vicente Amorim: There were quite a few, but probably the fight in the graveyard is the highlight. Not only because the moves are very hard, but also it was freezing cold and raining, and the fog that you see is eighty percent of the time real, so we couldn't really see a few feet away from us. She was drenched and freezing, and I think that only made her fiercer, it just brought out her f---ing killer instinct. It was incredible, and there's a moment where she takes out two baddies at once, which I was looking at and I said, "This is not how we rehearsed it, but it looks so much better. Let's keep it!" I don't know if it was the cold, or we were getting very close to wrapping and it was one of the last scenes we shot, if it was the rain, or if it was a combination of it all. It was amazing, it was cathartic.
Tsuyoshi Ihara is also in that scene, and he was also seen in Ninja with Scott Adkins. How did he come into the film?
Vicente Amorim: I worked with him ten years ago on a movie called Dirty Hearts, which isn't a yakuza movie, but it is sort of a samurai movie in Brazil also, and he won quite a few Best Actor awards for it. Dirty Hearts was my first movie with a lot of sword fighting, and he was fundamental in helping us put the sword fights together. Tsuyoshi Ihara is the real deal, he knows it all. I mean, there's no wonder that's he's Takashi Miike's sort of fetish actor, look at what he does in 13 Assassins. He was cast before the movie began, I knew I wanted to do it with him, and I love what he does with so little effort, he makes it seem so easy.
Were there any big challenges in the making of the film?
Vicente Amorim: Yes, to put together an international cast for a movie shot in Brazil about the yakuza within the Japanese community in Brazil, and have it be fun, which it has to be, and be interesting and be respectful to Japanese culture all at once, it's not a simple feat. I didn't do it on my own, we pulled it off together with the cast that we brought together, and the producers and the screenwriters. Putting that together and making it work as a kick-ass martial arts movie with a deeper coming-of-age story, I would've loved to have had another three weeks of shooting - wouldn't we all? - and it was raining and miserable in that sense, but I think that only made it better. The big deal is to make something about the yakuza with Japanese actors and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, also in Brazil, and make it international, keep it Brazilian, and for it to be Japanese all at once, I think that was our greatest challenge.
With Yakuza Princess out now, what do you have in the works at the moment?
Vicente Amorim: I'm shooting a series for Netflix Spain called Santo. It's a genre series that deals a little bit in the supernatural and little bit in the police noir category. It's going to be pretty intense.
from ScreenRant - Feed https://ift.tt/3jSLj1K
0 Comments