As a film critic, I occasionally come across something on the screen that sets off fireworks in my brain. It happened with Sakura Ando's explosive performance as a desperate boxer in "100 Yen Love" and with the funny, surprising and moving zombie comedy "One Cut of the Dead." And last year it also happened with Mayu Matsuoka
When I saw her play a nerdy 24-year-old obsessed with a junior-high crush in Akiko Ooku's "Tremble All You Want," the words "brilliant comic talent" appeared in my head framed by sparklers and pinwheels. In my four-star review of the film, I called her performance a "star-making turn" — it feels good to be right.
Following its premiere at the 2017 Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF), where it won the Audience Award, "Tremble All You Want" became a hit in Japan and screened at festivals overseas. Now Matsuoka is back as TIFF ambassador (which is essentially a glorified PR person), but in the past year she solidified her acting credentials with a role as a sex worker in "Shoplifters," the Hirokazu Kore-eda drama about an ersatz "family" of petty criminals that won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.