Welcome to the Tokyo of Edonism

There are stories and legends of how cities are not just buildings, roads, electric and water systems, but living, breathing entities that are sleeping as their oblivious inhabitants go about their daily toil. We, as humans, always take for granted that they will always be there servicing our needs, creating our conveniences and cocooning us from all the elements nature can throw at us. But what if they awoke, what if they decided to be less than benevolent, to be less than kind to us?

People say if you're not careful cities will eat you alive, some enter the sprawling metropolises and mega cities of our world, and never return from them. Some who enter change, their life-force drained and spent. A city is a force of nature, just as the wilderness, the deserts, the mountains and the oceans are. A city is not an inanimate realm. They are a world of dangers, aeon old mysteries and secret societies.

The Story's Characters

James Hallway: Sacha Mühlebach

James Hallway came to Tokyo four years ago with his wife Sophie. Together, they had a dream of forging an ex-pat life, career and family with all the trimmings. On paper James looked like he had it all. Sophie, his wife, beautiful, smart and loving. A new job with a finance company that promised to make him rich beyond his wildest dreams, and an apartment with a killer view of Tokyo.

When we meet James for the first time, he has become a pathetic shadow of his former self. He is struggling with work, his marriage with Sophie is broken, and he has fallen into a tailspin of alcoholism and hallucinogenic episodes. He wanders the streets of Tokyo daze and confused, the world glowing otherworldly and its people morphing into sinister beings in black. James doesn't know it, but his uniqueness had drawn him through the looking glass where there are individuals, and secret orders seeking him out.

Sophie Walls:

Sophie is played by Lucy King. Sophie followed James to Tokyo to support him and build their family together. After several years of trying, it all comes to nothing. She ends up having an affair with an Australian businessman and divorces James. She's a driven, strong and organized woman, who has feelings of bitterness over the wasted years of their marriage.

Geena Landlord: Helene Salvini Fujita

Is a beautiful and resourceful Neurobiologist who crosses paths with James when he is admitted to hospital after falling into a coma. She's a woman nursing secrets and personal pain. After meeting with James something inside her is unlocked and she takes it upon herself to try and save him from both himself and the dark forces that after after him. If she can succeed then perhaps finally she will find some inner peace to her demons.

The Cat Fish: Hiro Super

The Cat fish is a mysterious figure who possesses the answers to the mysteries of Edonism. He alone knows what is truly causing James' life to fall apart around him. He alone knows the truth behind the forces who are chasing James. Yet can he be trusted?

Henry Beemouth: Lorenzo Fantini

Henry is an old friend of James from the early days in the London finance world. He is an unscrupulous character only out for himself, and willing to use and manipulate others to get what he wants. With friends like Henry you don't need enemies.

Tony: Tony Evans

Tony is the type of guy who will find a penny in the street and turn into a pound. Tony is the type of guy who will win all expenses paid holidays to exotic locales. Tony's the kind of guy who will make you rich, or die trying. He doesn't suffer fools gladly and the price of failure with this man is banishment and humiliation. He'll be your best friend or your worst nightmare.

Behind the Story

Making a movie is like building a city where a lot of different creative souls live.

There's no doubt that EDOnism has been the best proof of this. The title itself refers to the multiple dimensions possessed by a metropolis like Tokyo. As EDO was its ancient name until the beginning of Meiji era in 1868, and the term "HEDONISM" refers both to the old life style of the so called "Floating World" and the worldwide selfish existence of the capitalistic age.

The poetic value of the movie relies on the psychological depth of the main characters and their mystical link to the "atmospheric environment" of the city. Somehow Tokyo has been "cast" to play the third protagonist, acting like the chorus of the Greek tragedy, as the urban landscape transforms itself into a figurative gigantic gate to an enigmatic entity.

While I was drafting the story at the end of the summer, I had in my mind the dramatic images of L'Aquila, the chief town of my region almost completely destroyed by an earthquake a few months before, the figure of a Cat Fish and the section of a human skull as depicted in the William Kurelek's painting "The Maze". Only when I started to read books about Japanese mythology I discovered that the Cat Fish was related to earthquake and associated to key events in the history of Japan. It was as if my own imagery, stimulated by the recent disaster of L'Aquila, had established a contact with a sort of cosmic mind. Soon after, at the beginning of the script writing stage, I stumbled upon the image of an ink painting by the 15th century artist Josetsu showing a man trying to catch a Cat Fish with a gourd. This enigmatic subject illustrated a derivation of a surreal Chinese saying "a catfish climbs up through a bamboo pole," which basically means "to do the impossible".

In fact, I must say that for Lorenzo, and myself working on this movie has been as much thrilling, bizarre and unearthly as trying "to catch a Cat Fish with a gourd". And in our case the gourd was our camera and the Cat Fish the boundless mystery Tokyo keeps within.

Yet it would have been utterly impossible "to do the impossible" without the commitment of so many people who joined the project before, during and after principal photography. Shooting a movie with such grand ambitions like EDOnism, with so few resources required the support of professional figures who totally embraced the challenge of wandering and running around streets, parks, trains and apartments like a small crew of war reporters fighting against the weather, the light, the schedule and all the unforeseen events unleashed by making a movie in a so overpopulated scenery.

First off; the producer, Lorenzo Fantini, who's been able to work in a chameleonic way, rewriting and polishing much of the dialogue to add his particular British panache to screenplay, casting all the actors and scouting the locations I've figured out for making the story's visuals more realistic. Also, he fiercely played the role of the shady Henry Beemouth while dealing with the fraught and formidable issues of the shooting schedule and sudden changes of climate and people minds, relentlessly working throughout the arc of production to achieve the best possible (and impossible) cut.

The main actress, Helene Salvini Fujita, who fits wonderfully so with my ideal of multiethnic and self-confident feminine character, and literally adopted for whole days the multiple personality of the dedicated as well sensual neurobiologist Geena Landlord, performing also the vocals of the song I've integrated into the movie score.

Sacha Mühlebach, who plays the dual role of main character James Hallway and his stunt man, offering his mind and his body to bring on screen the inner world of the Edonists, daring to give the most improbable performances in the most improbable places (and still being able to come back to his every day character).

Hiro Super, who brilliantly managed to create a living anime providing himself with a ghostly voice, the temper of the dark manipulator from a gothic novel, and personally assembling his own exclusive costume inspired by one of my early sketches of the Cat Fish.

Lucy King, who delivered a memorable interpretation as James' ex-wife Sophie Walls, and has been the precious production assistant, quickly solving unexpected issues and converting for an entire day her apartment into a movie set.

A crucial role has been played by the line producer Miles Elliot who provided us the main camera equipment to achieve footage as close to a cinematographic quality as possible and cooperated as camera operator during the Odaiba sequence.

Moreover we're grateful to Kana Yoshida, the make-up artist who passionately contributed to make more photogenic the gazes of the principles over the progress of the story; to Kyle H for playing the role of the intimidating agent and let us transform his apartment into hospital rooms more than once for pick-ups; to Tony Evans who gave us the presentation of a flabbergasting one-man-show, playing the boss of James on the set of his office space and helped us to get the right props for the action scenes; to Sakurako Yano who kindly made her apartment available on different occassions for being adapted to fit the mood of the James' domicile; to Andy of Shin Hinomoto Yurakucho who let us use his restaurant as the pictorial backdrop of the verbal duel between James and Henry; to Mark Spencer, the owner of the Hobgoblin pub that allowed us to evoke the British ambience for the flashbacks; to Steve Sneddon who drove his car to help us finding the right exteriors on night time; to Bianca Allen for her crystal rendition of the TV announcer line; to Cyrus Malekani, who pops out for few seconds in a critical as well as remarkable sequence.

Finally many special thanks to the multitasking Nate Jensen who started his collaboration to the movie as backstage photographer, then became an actor playing an agent and now is the brilliant webmaster of the official Edonism website.

About the Concept

Among the biggest cities on the planet, Tokyo could be considered a physical representation of the "augmented reality", that new dimension generated by the blend of virtual and real data streaming through mobiles. Its colossal hive of urban structures continuously regenerating from themselves, appear to hide the map of a hidden land still living through Shinto shrines, Torii gates, statues, lanterns, kabuki theatres, gardens and bridges. Somehow under the multitude of layers of architectonical surfaces it's still possible to notice dimensions belonging to different times but coexisting in the same space, like the rings in the tree trunk.

Tokyo is one of those cities where the definitions of "past" and "future" are blurred: it's easy to leave a road surrounded by skyscrapers and suddenly enter a dark alley decorated by red lanterns and symbols of ancient eras.

Since I had never been to Tokyo before, at the time of pre-production I was just able to imagine these particular feelings recalling impressions of cities I've actually visited, like London or Milan, where the mixture of old and new environments are more palpable. Therefore when I first thought about a story located in Tokyo, I was just aware that the main concept had to deal with the link between the collective memory of the city and the mind of the single inhabitant, both in its metaphorical and real meaning.

Last year, during a break from the shooting of the movie "Nepente" that I was directing in Rome, I've personally perceived an intense sensation of vertigo and disembodiment while I was walking amidst the crowd along Via del Corso. I felt like I was dreaming a different reality of that place, still preserving my ability to study my own perceptions. The stress of shooting was manifesting itself through a light migraine that was making me perceive the data streams filtered by my hurting senses like a distorted connection with the brain of the whole city. That's a particular way of knowledge close to the intuitions of philosophers like Nietzsche when he conceived the idea of the "eternal return" while he was on the Sils-Maria mountain, and by De Chirico as he had the revelation of his "metaphysical painting" in Turin after a period of illness.

Indeed I use to define my own creative method with the word "multimedianic art" since all my multimedia artworks (paintings, comics, novels, music video, short movies) belong to the same irrational need to channel in several codes the experience of the "over human", an inborn attraction towards the fascinating enigma surrounding the human being.

- Alessandro Fantini