Tran presents tense 'Norwegian Wood' at Venice film festival

The pacing, the blowing wind, the music and other atmospherics all helped create the tension in "Norwegian Wood," says Tran Anh Hung, presenting the haunting movie at the Venice film festival.

Based on a best-selling novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami, the story of love, sexuality and loss - mainly through suicide - is set in Japan in the volatile 1960s.

"The film is rich in physical variation," the Vietnamese-born Tran told AFP, discussing scenes in which the lead character Watanabe (Kenichi Matsuyama) paces around an apartment with the troubled Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi), and later tries to keep up with her in a green field.

Watanabe falls in love with Naoko despite her imbalance over losing her sister and boyfriend to suicide.

While promising to wait for Naoko until she overcomes the trauma at a special sanatorium, Watanabe gets deeply involved with another woman, Midori (Kiko Mizuhara), tumbling into romantic confusion.

"In the field scene the conversation is very physical, Naoko is talking about not being able to get aroused with her previous boyfriend," Tran said. "In fact it's a confession, which in church you would do sitting down."

Scenes in which blowing wind competes with the dialogue "also adds tension," Tran, 47, said of a story that in book form "has a very intimate relationship with the reader."

The film adaptation "was not just adapting a story... it was also adapting all the poetic ramifications, all the emotional ramifications that the book provokes in you," said Tran, who won the top prize Golden Lion here in 1995 for "Cyclo".

"I had to find a way to unlock this personal side," Tran said.

Even the language gap - Tran used interpreters to direct the all-Japanese cast - was a way to "find a different energy," he said.

And while the sexuality of the film, presented on Thursday, is replete with 1960s overtones, Tran sought to minimise visual references to the era, notably in the clothes, all neutral, even prim.

"We eliminated anything too hippy," he said.

Apart from the emblematic Beatles' song of the title, he shunned familiar tunes from the era, preferring to use "less well-known music but with strong emotional power... mosty to avoid the nostalgic side," Tran told reporters earlier.

"The story could otherwise be seen as something softer, nicer," he said. "Instead it's seen as harsher, crueler because of the music."

The many love scenes in the film are for the most part awkward, with the focus on the lovers' faces.

"I wanted to show the impact on Naoko when she made love with Watanabe. The rest could only distract from what is most important in the film," Tran said.

The Paris-based director had several exchanges with Murakami at the start of the project, but eventually, Tran recalled, the author said: "Do the film you have in mind. All that is needed is for you to make the best film possible."

"Norwegian Wood" is one of 24 films vying for the Golden Lion at the festival, which opened Wednesday and runs through September 11.