Japan’s Koji Yakusho wins best actor at Cannes for ‘Perfect Days’, an ode to a bathroom cleaner

By AFP

CANNES: Japan’s Koji Yakusho acquired best actor at Cannes on Saturday for “Perfect Days” by German director Wim Wenders, a touching story a few Tokyo toilet cleaner.

“I want to specifically thank Wim Wenders… who truly created a magnificent character,” he said as he obtained the award.

Yakusho, 67, appears in most scenes of “Perfect Days” as a mysterious, bookish man with out buddies, content material materials to spend his spare time learning, watering his crops, taking photos and listening to songs on his automotive stereo.

Director Wim Wenders, left, and Koji Yakusho pose on the image identify for the film ‘Perfect Days’ on the 76th worldwide film competitors, Cannes, southern France, May 26, 2023. (AP)

The versatile actor’s roles in over 4 a very long time of movie-making have ranged from warlords and gangsters to killers and cops — and now an everyman who retains most people washrooms of Tokyo pristine.

He has moreover crossed over to Hollywood for “Memoirs of a Geisha” in 2005 and “Babel” a 12 months later.

“Wim had given me very little information… There was a lot of mystery. Even today, it’s a character I know almost nothing about,” he said of his perform, which involved just about no dialogue.

Koji Yakusho (AP)

“It was the first time I shot like that, over a very short period, without rehearsal,” he said about working with one in every of many giants of European cinema.

Germany’s Wenders, 77, acquired the best prize Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1984 for “Paris, Texas”.

Born in 1956 in Isahaya, Nagasaki prefecture, Yakusho first labored as a metropolis hall employee sooner than turning to showing in 1979, after following up on an advert in a newspaper.

Out of 800 candidates he was actually one in every of 4 chosen, “and today I am the only one to be an actor”, he suggested French media in 2003.

His first huge perform that helped propel his occupation was throughout the in model hit “Tampopo” (1985) regarding the hunt for a noodle soup recipe.

Since then amongst his notable motion pictures have been “The Eel”, winner of the Palme in 1997, and “The Third Murder” in 2017.

In 2009 he made his first and solely perform “Toad’s Oil” by means of which he moreover carried out the lead perform.

Asked what retains him going throughout the commerce, he suggested The Hollywood Reporter in 2019: “I always think I haven’t got it quite right, but in the next film I’ll finally nail it. I guess that’s the drug of this business for me, which has kept me going for 40 years.”

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CANNES: Japan’s Koji Yakusho acquired best actor at Cannes on Saturday for “Perfect Days” by German director Wim Wenders, a touching story a few Tokyo toilet cleaner.

“I want to specifically thank Wim Wenders… who truly created a magnificent character,” he said as he obtained the award.

Yakusho, 67, appears in most scenes of “Perfect Days” as a mysterious, bookish man with out buddies, content material materials to spend his spare time learning, watering his crops, taking photos and listening to songs on his automotive stereo.googletag.cmd.push(function() googletag.present(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); );

Director Wim Wenders, left, and Koji Yakusho pose on the image identify for the film ‘Perfect Days’ on the 76th worldwide film competitors, Cannes, southern France, May 26, 2023. (AP)

The versatile actor’s roles in over 4 a very long time of movie-making have ranged from warlords and gangsters to killers and cops — and now an everyman who retains most people washrooms of Tokyo pristine.

He has moreover crossed over to Hollywood for “Memoirs of a Geisha” in 2005 and “Babel” a 12 months later.

“Wim had given me very little information… There was a lot of mystery. Even today, it’s a character I know almost nothing about,” he said of his perform, which involved just about no dialogue.

Koji Yakusho (AP)

“It was the first time I shot like that, over a very short period, without rehearsal,” he said about working with one in every of many giants of European cinema.

Germany’s Wenders, 77, acquired the best prize Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1984 for “Paris, Texas”.

Born in 1956 in Isahaya, Nagasaki prefecture, Yakusho first labored as a metropolis hall employee sooner than turning to showing in 1979, after following up on an advert in a newspaper.

Out of 800 candidates he was actually one in every of 4 chosen, “and today I am the only one to be an actor”, he suggested French media in 2003.

His first huge perform that helped propel his occupation was throughout the in model hit “Tampopo” (1985) regarding the hunt for a noodle soup recipe.

Since then amongst his notable motion pictures have been “The Eel”, winner of the Palme in 1997, and “The Third Murder” in 2017.

In 2009 he made his first and solely perform “Toad’s Oil” by means of which he moreover carried out the lead perform.

Asked what retains him going throughout the commerce, he suggested The Hollywood Reporter in 2019: “I always think I haven’t got it quite right, but in the next film I’ll finally nail it. I guess that’s the drug of this business for me, which has kept me going for 40 years.”

ALSO READ | 

Turkey’s Merve Dizdar wins best actress at Cannes for ‘About Dry Grasses’

The precise winner at Cannes was actress Sandra Hueller

‘Protests over pension reforms in France repressed in stunning methodology’: ‘Palme’ winner Justine Triet