“Chalk and cheese”, “oil and water” and “Beauty and the Beast” were just some of the baffled reactions circulating among Japanese cinephiles when news broke that auteur Hirokazu Koreeda had cast A-lister Haruka Ayase and television comic Daigo Yamamoto as a couple in his latest sci-fi drama, Sheep in the Box.
Watching them enter one of the exclusive terraces of the Palais des Festivals et des Congres in Cannes, where Koreeda’s film debuted at the French resort city’s annual film festival last month, it is easy to understand the online commotion brought about by this curveball match-up.
Omnipresent on Japanese magazine covers and advertising billboards, Ayase arrives in a striped, multilayered designer outfit clearly unsuited for the heatwave sweeping across France. This does not concern Yamamoto, who turns up in a snappy T-shirt and trousers.
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