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Takeshi Miike's Ai to Makoto Film to Be Screened at Cannes
posted on by Jennifer Sherman
Takashi Miike's live-action film adaptation of Ikki Kajiwara's Ai to Makoto (Ai and Makoto) romance manga will be screened at the 65th Cannes International Film Festival in France. This year's event will run May 16-27, and the film will screen as part of the "Midnight Screenings" section of the the festival. Kouji Wakamatsu's 11:25 The Day He Chose His Own Fate and Abbas Kiarostami's French-Japanese production Like Someone in Love will also screen at Cannes this year.
In Ai to Makoto, Emi Takei (live-action Rurouni Kenshin) plays an angelic high school girl named Ai Saotome, and Satoshi Tsumabuki (live-action Dororo, Dragon Head, Ikebukuro West Gate Park) plays the "ultra" high school delinquent Makoto Taiga in the love story. Takayuki Takuma (live-action Hana Yori Dango) adapted the manga for the silver screen, and Takeshi Kobayashi (Halfway, Bandage) composed the soundtrack. Kajiwara (Ashita no Joe, Kyojin no Hoshi, Tiger Mask) wrote the original manga with illustrations by Takumi Nagayasu (Mibu Gishiden, The Legend of Mother Sarah) for Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine from 1973 to 1976.
Cannes screened Tatsumi, Eric Khoo's animated film adaptation of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life autobiographical manga, last year as part of the "Un Certain Regard" section of the event. Miike's Ichimei — a live-action 3D film remake of the 1962 film Seppuku (Harakiri) — and Naomi Kawase's Hanezu no Tsuki also had screenings at the event.
36 years after the story's last live-action adaptation, Ai to Makoto will open in theaters across Japan on June 16. The Ai to Makoto romance manga inspired a live-action television adaptation in 1974 as well as three live-action films in 1974, 1975 and 1976.
Source: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web
