Masaharu Fukuyama stars in "Matinee no Owari ni" (At the End of the Matinee), a film adaptation of the romantic novel of the same title by Akutagawa Prize-winning novelist Keiichiro Hirano.
A man and a woman who've met only three times feel drawn to each other but eventually go different ways -- Fukuyama plays a world-famous classical guitarist who plunges into a passionate affair. Now aged 50, Fukuyama is continuing his evolution as a musician and actor.
He recently spoke to The Yomiuri Shimbun about why he threw himself into a romantic story again after such a long time.
Satoshi Makino, a guitarist with a busy international career, is introduced to Paris-based journalist Yoko Komine (played by Yuriko Ishida) after one of his concerts and falls in love with her.
Set in Tokyo, Paris and New York, the film tells the story of their relationship over a period of six years. Makino and Yoko, who is engaged to a Japanese-American man (Yusuke Iseya), are well past their youth and are supposed to be mature enough to be sensible. Yet fate brings them together, and they unwittingly fall in love.
The film is directed by Hiroshi Nishitani, who worked with Fukuyama in the TV dramas "Bijo ka Yaju" (The beauty or the beast) and "Galileo." The original novel is a bestseller that sold more than 500,000 copies.
"It's a beautiful, elaborately constructed story," Fukuyama said in praise of the book. He continued with a mischievous chuckle, "If there's something you'd call a muscle memory for playing a romantic role, it was all but gone from me."
It's not hard to recall Fukuyama in various romantic scenes on the big and small screen. In 1995, he gave a sentimental performance as a man who tries to suppress his love for a woman and helps her achieve romance in the TV drama "Itsuka Mata Aeru" (We can meet again someday). In 1999, he played a womanizer who's awakened to true love in "Perfect Love."
"I knew it. You have to go back that far," Fukuyama said. "I haven't done many works with romance as the central theme. It was back in the 1990s that I was assigned romantic roles."
But Fukuyama added that because he had had a long hiatus from romantic works, he found it all the easier to understand Makino's bewilderment at the sudden love affair.
"The story is textured, and that probably worked for me. It's not like a man being startled when his hand touches a woman's hand," Fukuyama said, stressing that the story is about questioning the basic theme of why people fall in love and yearn to be loved.
Yoko has developed post-traumatic stress disorder because she saw a colleague die in a terrorist attack they were reporting on. Makino feels frustrated because all he can do for Yoko is talk with her over Skype.
Fukuyama said the scene he found most difficult was the one in which Makino and Yoko finally see each other again at a restaurant in Paris. While staring at Yoko, Makino says, "If I ever heard you died somewhere on this Earth, I'd die, too." It's a tense yet dramatic confession of love.
"It's a paradoxical 'I love you,'" Fukuyama said. "It comes from his strong determination to go on protecting her no matter what. But this line could be a turnoff for women, even though it sounds great when you read it in the novel."
Fukuyama did several takes of the scene, subtly changing his facial expression and the tone of his voice each time. He expressed unshakable determination in his smooth tone of voice.
Another line of Makino that went straight to his heart was: "People think they can only change the future. But, in truth, the future always changes the past."
After misunderstanding each other, both protagonists marry a different person and return to where they belong. Yet the story goes further and offers a message that even though their breakup is the irreversible past, the present can "update" it in a new form.
"Even when something didn't go well in the past, you can sometimes view it positively later, thinking you're here now because of what happened in the past," Fukuyama said. "I suppose that's life, like a board game with a tendency to completely overturn the situation,"
Next year, Fukuyama will celebrate the 30th anniversary of his debut.
"How I can make my past, present and future convincing -- that's all that counts, I think," he said.
Playing classic guitar
Fukuyama was born in 1969 in Nagasaki Prefecture. He debuted as a singer-songwriter in 1990 and released many hit songs such as "Hello," "Sakurazaka" and "Kazoku ni Naroyo." As an actor, he has starred in many TV dramas and films, such as "Soshite Chichi ni Naru" (Like Father, Like Son) and "ManHunt."
Part of the new film's appeal is the classical guitar played by Fukuyama himself. He performed "Kofuku no Koka" (The coin of happiness), a poignant piece of music that plays a key role in the story.
Fukuyama practiced playing the classical guitar for about three months under Shinichi Fukuda, Japan's leading classical guitarist.
"Everything is different from the acoustic guitar and the electric guitar I usually play, from the preparation position to the way you add vibrato with the left hand and the fingering of the right hand," Fukuyama said. He became enthusiastic as he started talking about the guitar.
The film also depicts Makino's struggle in a slump as an artist after celebrating the 20th anniversary of his debut as a guitarist.
"I can understand his feeling really well," Fukuyama said. "In my case, I'm slumping by default," he added with surprising honesty. "You can always get stuck when writing music," he continued. "Things go smoothly once in a while, but you must never think that's your true ability. You can't go on unless you become defiant like that."
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