Mishima Yukiko Channels Ozu in Tokyo Competition Entry 'Two Cigarettes, Three Nights'

Director Mishima Yukiko has put a film in competition at the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival, and its characters spend nearly all of it walking. "Two Cigarettes, Three Nights," adapted from Chihaya Akane's 2014 novel, premiered in the festival's main section at its Tokyo Midtown hub.

Mishima is known for dark relationship dramas, including the multiple-award-winning "Dear Etranger" (2017). Her new film is lighter on its feet, though not light. Matsuoka Mayu ("Tremble All You Want") plays Kanna, a picture book illustrator tired of her nice-but-boring live-in boyfriend (Inoue Yuki) and physically involved with a cynical married lover (Nakajima Ayumu). Then Haseo (Narita Ryo, "Convenience Story"), a womanizing, still-single drug company salesman and old college friend, reenters her life after seven years. He keeps things strictly platonic. They talk. Banter, mostly.

Why does everyone walk so much?

The novel set many scenes inside a coffee shop. The movie moves them outside. "In the movie (Kanna and Haseo) are walking just about the whole time," Mishima said in an interview at Tokyo Midtown. The choice comes from memory: years ago, she and a male friend "would walk until dawn, just chatting about trivial things."

Shot in Kyoto, Hiroshima and Toyama Prefecture, the film pointedly avoids postcard framing in two of Japan's most photographed cities. No temples, no cherry blossoms. Instead the pair strolls riverbanks and railroad tracks. "When deciding on a location, it's not just about picking a 'pretty' spot," Mishima said. "Rather it's more about choosing a place where the scene comes to life."

What does Ozu have to do with it?

The film's most visible formal debt is to Ozu Yasujiro, the Japanese master who framed characters side by side or moving in unison. Mishima applies the principle literally: Kanna and Haseo don't face each other on camera until a chosen moment. They sit side by side at a ramen counter, next to each other on buses and trains, "looking in the same direction."

"I love how he captures the way people move within the flow of Japanese life, without cutting the shot, creating a sense of wonder," she said. "He is also brilliant in how he makes a grand narrative emerge from small, personal moments... My film starts from that personal perspective, but then it kind of opens up to the world."

Is it a comedy?

The first act hints at sex comedy, and Mishima cast both leads with comic timing in mind. "I thought that having a good sense for comedy was essential for the long dialogue scenes," she said. "They require a sense of rhythm and actors with a feel for comedy have it. It makes a huge difference."

But this is no laugh fest. Kanna and Haseo behave in ways selfish, callous and even cruel. "I think movies should be able to portray all kinds of people and tell all kinds of stories," Mishima said. Viewers, she argues, will still connect: "They'll be able to find a part of themselves — 'Oh, I've felt this way too.'"

Supporting characters complicate the picture: a surly bartender who thinks Kanna is hurting Haseo, and Kanna's jaded college friend, an admitted adulterer who sympathizes with her infidelities. The Japanese title is "The Male Friend," but Mishima says the film drifts from that theme toward what Kanna comes to see — herself and the world.

The ending stays open to interpretation, sealed in Kanna's final painting, born of her three days with Haseo and a sharp break from her commercial hack work. "What I want to convey is embedded in that final painting," Mishima said. Festival audiences now get to decode it.