From his 2005 feature debut ¡°Bare-assed Japan¡± to the 2011 film ¡°Mitsuko Delivers,¡± Yuya Ishii made scrappy indie films with a raucous comic edge that were hits on the festival circuit. Then, with his 2013 hit ¡°The Great Passage,¡± about a geeky editor (Ryuhei Matsuda) struggling to make a new dictionary and find love, Ishii shifted gears to more serious and commercial fare.
With ¡°Masked Hearts,¡± a comedy-drama about a dysfunctional family, Ishii has returned to his indie roots and not only with foul-mouthed dialogue: His protagonist, Hanako Orimura (Mayu Matsuoka), is a fledgling film director who has a bruising brush with the industry¡¯s mainstream.
Ishii, who wrote the original script, is coming from a personal and painfully real place ¡ª hopefully one not as tough on the ego as Hanako¡¯s. As played by Matsuoka, she is another of Ishii¡¯s likeably indomitable heroines, though she is also reminiscent of the lonely, nerdy protagonist of Matsuoka¡¯s 2017 breakout comedy, ¡°Tremble All You Want.¡±
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