Veteran auteur Kohei Oguri’s first film in 10 years, “Foujita” is a biopic of artist Tsuguharu “Leonard” Foujita. The toast of prewar Paris for his elegantly drawn women and cats, Foujita radically switched styles on his return to a militarized Japan and his propaganda art for the war effort was heavily criticized following Japan’s 1945 defeat.
Joe Odagiri, known as “Japan’s Johnny Depp” for his offbeat role choices, brings Foujita to eccentric — if essentially serious — life, while uncannily resembling the artist, whose fashion trademarks were his pudding bowl hairstyle, round glasses and Charlie Chaplin-esque moustache. But Oguri’s deliberately paced, highly stylized approach to his subject makes “Foujita” less a movie than a series of dreamy tableaux vivants, gorgeously filmed by cinematographer Hiroshi Machida.
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