FOUJITA

Introduction
FOUJITA is the film that Kohei OGURI made in ten years after Buried Forest (05).  It tells the life story of Tsuguharu FOUJITA , a Japanese painter who became the darling of École de Paris in 1920s. Oguri has carefully approached his subject not to make a typical “bio-pic” of the painter. He has taken FOUJITA’s life in two different times and cultures, capturing the sorrow and loneliness of the painter hidden behind the struggle to survive as an artist through collision of the times and culture.

Story
1920s – Paris
It’s been ten years living in Paris as an uprising artist, Foujita (Joe ODAGIRI) goes on spree with model Kiki (AngèleHumeau) and fellow painters every night to Café de la Rotonde where he meets Lucie Badout (Ana GIRARDOT). She is a woman with beautiful white skin that inspires Foujita to create the color ‘grand fond blanc’, exquisitely pale white.

1940s – Japan
Foujita’s ‘army documentary paintings’ are exhibited. None of the works does not have any similarity or trait of his works in Paris; Ukiyo-e inspired oil paintings now are replaced with Delacroix style of drawings.
The threat of air raids become intense, and Foujita and his wife Kimiyo (Miki NAKATANI) evacuate to rural village where he discovers richness of nature.