Tran Anh Hung tried his best to capture the essence of novelist Haruki Murakami's 1987 global best-seller in the movie version of "Norwegian Wood," including the timeless nature of first love, the French director said last week in Tokyo.

"It's a story of first love that you lose almost immediately when you have it," Tran said at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan. "It's a universal experience . . . and this is how I wanted to put it forward and promote it."

The Vietnamese-born director also said he focused on reflecting Murakami's writing style in his film, which opens Dec. 11.