An Interview with Mayu Nakamura: Director of Intimate Stranger (2021)

From skin-crawling psychological thrillers to heart-warming films driven by a social cause, CinemaWorld is spotlighting the diversity of cinematic gems by Asian filmmakers this July.

Discovering the Vision Behind Intimate Stranger

Gritty and clinical, yet uncomfortably sensual in its storytelling, Intimate Stranger is Mayu Nakamura’s 2021 feature film – a provoking psychological-thriller about a mother’s obsessive love.

Starring the veteran Japanese actress Asuka Kurosawa who plays the desperate, tortured mother and Fuju Kamio as the young, naive scammer, Nakamura’s carefully curated story explores the toxic mother-son relationship between Megumi and Yuji, and the ugly world of telephone-scams that plague Japan. Nakamura’s background in documentary filmmaking also comes through with the film’s intensely quiet observation of the characters’ developments, along with the twisted bond that forms between Megumi and Yuji in the isolation of the former’s home. 

A film that offers immense depth in its nuance and complexity, Nakamura joins us on CinemaWorld to share more about her inspirations and work in a special interview.

The Journey to Directing: Mayu Nakamura's Path to Intimate Stranger

CinemaWorld: Intimate Stranger is set in post-COVID Japan. Why did you choose this particular setting and how did it shape the narrative and your writing?

Nakamura: Actually, the film originated long before the pandemic. I’ve been writing for several years and the original story was already in place about this single mother looking for her son, who is then approached by a young scammer. That story was already in place, but when we got the money to shoot the film, it was 2020 and COVID had just started. So we basically reset the story in pandemic time.

The logistics of shooting (during the pandemic) was a bit of a challenge but I think it added more dimension to the story. It was originally set indoors about these two people's relationship transforming within this very enclosed space. But because of the pandemic, the outside world becomes even more dangerous and menacing, and their isolation becomes even more acute in some ways. So it precipitates the intensity of their relationship and isolation even more so because the film is set in post-COVID Tokyo.

CinemaWorld: This theme of isolation, was it something that was already a theme you were interested in exploring in the original story or was it just something that came with the post-COVID narrative?

Nakamura: I wanted to portray this intense relationship between Asian mothers and their sons because one of the inspirations of the story started much earlier on. I studied filmmaking in the US and I've been away from home for 14 years. So I was very curious about how, I'm not sure about Singapore, but like in Japan and probably in Korea, mothers tend to dote on their first born sons — I guess it's Asian culture.

I was interested in this kind of obsession, the mother's obsession towards the son, because the relationship between mother and daughter is so different from mother and son, especially in Asia, because Asian mothers tend to really fixate on the first born son. So this woman who has lost her first born son is really obsessed with finding the surrogate son. That’s the crux of the story that I originally wrote. But because the pandemic happened, I reset the story in the pandemic time, and the backdrop of the pandemic made their isolation even more acute.

CinemaWorld: It's interesting that you mentioned that this was your focus, the almost obsessive, toxic relationship between mother and son. But then there's also this insertion of the scammer and the scamming cases in Japan that we found out that are actually very common. How did these themes bleed together into this story?

Nakamura: I’ve lived in the US for so long, and in Europe as well, and I was very curious about this grandma scam, the telephone scam. Usually a man would call his ageing, elderly mother — usually much older than this woman that I am portraying — mothers in their 70s and 80s, you know, the sons who could possibly be 30 or 40, 50. (They) call up saying, “Oh, I lost the company's money,” or “I'm in trouble, please cover me, send me money.” This scam has been rampant now for many, many years in Japan.

I'm not sure about other countries, but I thought it was… almost a reflection of this mother and son relationship, because it's never a daughter.I have never heard about a daughter scam because they won't spend money on the daughter. Even the elderly mother would be willing to send money to their grown up sons. It’s a kind of reflection of society, of a patriarchal society where they value their first born sons especially, so parents are willing to put up money for their sons. I'm trying to do a critique on that, because women are usually the ones who are being preyed on, the mothers.

So this woman (Megumi) kind of takes that back for herself and tries to scam the scammer. It has a feminist take in some ways, but she's so desperate to find the surrogate son that she scams the scammers. In this case, the boy who is scamming doesn't know a mother's love, so he is prone to this motherly affection that he's scamming women because he wants to feel the mother's love vicariously.

Exploring Themes: Identity and Connection in Nakamura's Film

CinemaWorld: Then is there a clear villain or hero in this story?

Nakamura: It's very complex because they're both victims and offenders. Both of them — the mother and the scammer — they're both kind of a victim and an offender at the same time. The only (seeming offender) is the guy who runs this scamming group. There is no clear-cut villain.

CinemaWorld: What sort of conversations or do you want your audience to have after watching this movie or what do you want their take away to be?

Nakamura: I think one of the reasons I did this film was… I'm not sure about the other Asian countries, but in Japan it's hard to make films about middle-aged women as protagonists. It took me a while to raise money because though we have a lot of female directors and female filmmakers, the people who put in money and our investors are all men.

So they usually say, oh, we don't want to watch like middle-aged women protagonists. We want a young woman and especially because this story is about this strange erotic relationship between an older woman and a younger man, a lot of the investors had a problem with it because they are men — (though) they wouldn't have any problem if it's otherwise.

I think what I wanted to get across to the audience was that there are so many interesting stories (about) women over 35… and I want people to appreciate that women over 35 are still women.

The same goes with the actresses. They have a really hard time here because if they're over 35, the only roles they get are the good mother and good wife and nothing interesting. So what I would like to do is to make more interesting films about women over 35 and the audience to get used to or to find that there's something interesting to be learned from a woman of that age.

CinemaWorld: Personally, this story really resonated with me. I think it's really brilliant that there are such narratives about women out there. Because, like you said, particularly in Japan, it's very common for the portrayal of women in film to be about a middle-aged woman, the good mother, the good wife, the good daughter-in-law perhaps. It's very difficult to get stories of women showcasing other forms of feminisms — something cruel, something evil, something twisted.

Why did you choose to have this show of eroticism between mother and child? I think it's one thing to show a toxic obsession between mother and child, but how did you want it to play out in the film?

Nakamura: You know, there's sort of a sexual tension between these two characters, but they never really have sex or anything but I guess there is a little bit of an incestuous dimension to this.

I think because in Japanese families in general, a lot of times fathers are absent, so the mothers spend so much time with their children and because the father's always absent, sometimes mothers fixate on their sons — almost like a surrogate lover in some ways. They groom them to be their ideal men.

Sexless marriage is one of the big problems (too). Once they have kids, they don't have sex and so they go for extramarital affairs and whatnot.

CinemaWorld: Intimate Stranger felt like a kind of protest against all the stereotypes and boxes that society and culture try to fit them (women) in, which I found very interesting in terms of your own filmmaking journey, because you grew up in Japan and then you studied abroad for such a long period of time.

I think you mentioned in previous interviews that this experience, this journey gives you a bird's eye view of Japan society from the outside, and of course, that also spurred you to be more bold in exploring such topics. You also stated that you are always curious about certain phenomena as well as try to challenge some form of stereotype. Could you share with us how curiosity towards such phenomena and these social issues help guide your observations into subsequent filmmaking projects?

Nakamura: I make documentaries as well as fiction so I'm always curious about what's going on around the world and around me. That's one of the reasons I made two films relating to the pandemic. She is Me, I am Her, which is the second film I did after Intimate Stranger, is about four women surviving in post-COVID Tokyo, but the four women of different generations and backgrounds are played by one actress. (Nahana) plays (multiple roles), from a 20 year old sex worker to a 40 year old blind woman. It's kind of a wide spectrum. The reason why I did that film was because, with Intimate Stranger as well, I was really interested in the (phenomenon) of COVID. The pandemic was the only thing that people could relate to all over the world because it's a kind of a disaster that everybody experienced.

Japan has a lot of earthquakes but a lot of the disasters are usually very topical. However, the pandemic is something that everybody on the planet experienced. So, I thought I should make a film about this, what's going on right now because everybody can relate to it. That sort of stems from my curiosity as a documentarist.

 

CinemaWorld: Speaking of your documentary background, you did mention that your Director of Photography (DP) for Intimate Stranger also has a documentary background. Why did you choose a documentary approach to your film rather than a more conventional narrative fiction?

Nakamura: I don't see any border between documentary and fiction because I started off, I studied filmmaking at the NYU grad film (programme and then I came back (to Japan), made the first feature, which is a fiction then I went to the documentary. But it made me realise that in fiction as well as documentary, it's about observing people – (about) people put in difficult situations and you observe how they behave. And a lot of people think that documentary is just about recording what's going on, but it's actually directing because you have to direct people.

In fiction you direct actors but in documentaries you direct real people. So you sort of ask them the right questions at the right time or you ask them to go to certain places with them and see what happens, to figure out the chemical reaction between this person and the environment or the people they're interacting with. So it’s very similar for me. You're observing people and how they behave.

And I like working with documentary DPs because they have an eye for capturing the moment, like capturing the performance as if it's like a documentary, as if it were really happening in front of you. One of my favourite directors is John Cassavetes, and he's an actor (as well) and he's known for focusing on actors’ performances  because that's what's most important in fiction. With the documentary cameraman, you can do something like that (where) you focus on the performance rather than composing the image.

CinemaWorld: In your Screen Daily interview, you shared that you like to capture the small dramas of ordinary people. It sounds like you want the audience to see the world through your eyes, unfiltered, spontaneous, rather than rehearsed. How has that changed or rather influenced your own directorial style?

Nakamura: Oh, actually, I don't improvise everything, but when I'm preparing, I do a lot of rehearsals. With Intimate Stranger, I did one rehearsal, to three rehearsals with Asuka Kurosawa, but she's very veteran so she didn't want to do too many rehearsals. But with Fuju Kamio who’s a younger actor — he already has a little bit of experience — I wanted him to really get in touch with the character so we had the acting coach train him. So we do a lot of rehearsals (where you get to) explore the scenes. A lot of times, I explore what's behind the script in the rehearsal.

With the other film She is Me, I am Her, I rehearsed a lot with the actors and I created the script together with the actors. You have a main story line and the script, but then when you start rehearsing, you change the lines, because sometimes I realise I can't say certain lines. And usually their (the actors’) instincts are right because they're in the character. Or, we think about what's more feasible in a particular situation, and then they bring some ideas (and other times) my camera person will bring in some ideas.

So you know, the script is sort of like a blueprint of the film. You have the basic storyline and ideas, but you flesh it out with the actors and the camera person, art directors and everybody kind of puts in. Sorry, maybe I'm not answering the question in the right way, but in a way it’s like a documentary. You bring people's different elements together and construct the film.

CinemaWorld: I think it's quite interesting how you're talking about documentaries, because you said they are very much like fiction or narrative films. Do you think there's some sort of construction that goes behind the performances in documentaries too?

Nakamura: Yeah, in a way. Because once you turn the camera on someone, they can't really be their ordinary self. They change.

I did this film, a documentary film called Alone Again in Fukushima, which is about the man who remained in a nuclear zone with the animals for eight years. I followed him for about 8 years until the end of the Tokyo Olympics. In that particular film, the situation, the story line is almost beyond fiction. It's going to take millions of dollars to recreate the nuclear explosion. It's basically no man's land. It’s very surreal.

He has been captured in a lot of documentaries and a lot of films have been made about him, so he always has something to say. I'm not necessarily saying that he's performing, but in documentary as well as fiction, but especially in documentary, they (the subjects) have something that they want to get across.

So in his case, the reason why he stayed there with the animals was because he was protesting against the use of nuclear power and questioning, just because the accident happened, why do we have to kill the animals and desert our homeland?

A lot of the films that I work on are inspired by real events so there's a cross between documentary and fiction.

Overcoming Obstacles: Mayu Nakamura on Directing Intimate Stranger

CinemaWorld: Many of your films are based in and on Japan. If you're talking to our budding young filmmakers here at CinemaWorld, what do you think helps a localised story travel beyond borders so that different audiences can resonate with it?

Nakamura: It's a tricky question because when you try to be so-called universal, it becomes very bland and not so interesting. Asia has such rich local cultures that could be exotic to people in the West.

So there's the element where you need to have something that people can relate to universally, but then it could have like a localised flavour, so to speak. It could be the mother and son story (like Intimate Stranger) but it’s set in a very Japanese context.

CinemaWorld: You mentioned previously that it was a “low budget, quick and dirty” way of filmmaking for yourself. How do you think that experience has benefited you in making a film during the pandemic when every other resource is so tied up?

Nakamura: It’s funny to say, but I kind of thrive on crises. Usually I get very active in times of crisis. Because of the pandemic in the beginning, the production shut down and I thought, that means that we have all these great actors and great crew. People are available, so I decided to make a short film, which turned into She is Me, I am Her, my other film. And with Intimate Stranger, we were preparing and then it got into the pandemic so we incorporated the pandemic into the film.

The government also dished out some money for artists during the pandemic, so a lot of people were able to make films with that grant and I did one with the other film.

I'm still struggling and trying to raise money. It's always a big question, it takes forever. It's actually harder now than during the pandemic. Because people now are so busy with so many productions, actors are all booked till like, 2026. I'm trying to co-produce with people, with European investors, or find resources outside and I also have several projects in America. I'm trying to live part of the time in the US and, you know, the Asian American film makers are doing very well in Hollywood and Asian stories are bringing interest.

… You have to tailor the story to what you're capable of doing… then you try to be inventive with the limited resources you have.

CinemaWorld: Are these limitations the reason why you chose to have only one actress for She is Me, I am Her?

Nakamura: It's not so much a limitation. I made the first short film that did very well in the film festivals and the producer asked if I could make a feature film on Nahana, who is the main actress and I thought maybe I can do three other short films with her. And if the same actress plays different characters then it's sort of saying, as the title suggests, this woman is like me. It emphasises the fact that having this same woman playing different women, it means that all these different women are part of me.

From the regular ordinary housewife to a sex worker to a blind woman… they all have something in common with me. [Perhaps] you don't think in the real world, you would have anything in common with these women, but they do have something that you can relate to.

CinemaWorld: Do you have any advice for young filmmakers whose dreams are as big as yours, but whose (filmmaking) realities are just as harsh?

Nakamura: I'm still struggling, so it's hard for me to say. But I feel like South Asian and other Asian countries have much more resources to tap on, (whereas) the Japanese film industry doesn't. So I think there are a lot of avenues to explore and there's so much rich culture that could be used for different films. For example, I'm doing something about shamanism in the South of Japan — there are many shaman stories right now in horror films and stuff like that. So, you can use a rich native culture that doesn't exist in other parts of the world for storytelling.

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Watch Intimate Stranger (2021)

If you enjoy films that explore feminine identities, marginalised communities and stories that venture into forgotten or unseen spaces, take a look at Nakamura’s other introspective works on her website. You can also find her on Instagram and X.

Alongside this Japanese psychological-thriller, CinemaWorld is also showcasing the touching drama Confetti (2021) by Chinese filmmaker, Ann Hu, which sheds light on dyslexia and the struggles experienced by Asian-American immigrants. Check out our exclusive interview with Ann Hu here.

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