Coming last in a daylong round of media interviews, I was expecting my 40 minutes with Shinji Aoyama to be strained, as in "I'm so tired I can hardly stand." Instead, he came into the meeting room at Toho with a smile and a brisk manner, as in "I'm just getting warmed up." While he was obviously there to talk up his new film, he was also the director-as-film-buff, who lit up when names of his favorites were mentioned, including Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch and Tai Kato. Speaking about his own work, though, he was less the enthusiast than the sharp-as-tacks analyst, able to sum up, in a few lucid phrases, exactly what he was about and why.
How does "Lakeside Murder Case" fit with the rest of your work? It seems to be something of a departure.
My films are often about how families and other communities are built and fall apart. How one incident can break a community apart. This film is about such a community. It's also about how strangers relate to each other.