The Asahi Shimbun (www.asahi.com)
Date of interview unknown, possibly at the time KMS was released in Japan.
By Kimie Itakura
English translation

Standing next to actress Heather Graham, who in her see-through top exuded an aura of sexiness, Chen Kaige looked more like a wealthy sugar daddy than a respected filmmaker.

The Chinese director was in Tokyo recently to promote his first English-language feature production, which is also his Hollywood debut, with the film's heroine, Graham.

Killing Me Softly is an erotic thriller whose commercial selling point appears to be its sex scenes involving bondage and sadomasochism-featuring the shapely Graham, the star of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and From Hell, and a well-muscled Joseph Fiennes of Shakespeare in Love.

Predictably, though, Chen, who won the Palme d'Or for Farewell My Concubine at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993, said his aim was not to highlight the radical sex scenes, but to present them with style and beauty.

The use of silk ribbons around her neck in the bondage scene, for example, is more symbolic than sensational, Chen said, as they are an allusion to the climbing ropes used by alpinist Adam (Fiennes); ropes can save a life or take a life.

In the film, Alice (Graham), an American working in London as a Web site developer, falls in love with Adam in the moment when she happens to stand beside him at an intersection one morning on her way to work. It doesn't take long before she leaves her engineer-boyfriend for this mysterious stranger, about whom she knows very little.

Soon she learns that Adam, whose many mountain rescues have made him a hero, failed to save his own lover's life during a mountaineering venture together. Aware of his dark obsession, she begins to develop suspicions about how his former lover died and anxiety over her own fate. Despite the film's bold portrayal of sexuality- which the filmmaker may have trouble slipping past the censors in his home country-Chen said he was interested in delving into ``human relations'' and the psyche.

"I think this is a story that happens everywhere," he said. While modern technology, with its faxes and e-mail, has radically facilitated daily communication, it does not seem to have increased mutual human understanding, the director said.``In modern times we get everything we want so easily, but it's so difficult to understand each other. This is a social disease we share everywhere,'' Chen said in fluent English.

While filmmakers from Taiwan and Hong Kong, including John Woo and Ang Lee, have won recognition in Hollywood, Chen is the first among the "fifth generation" of filmmakers-who emerged in the wake of China's oppressive Cultural Revolution-to have been invited by a Hollywood producer to create an English-language entertainment. Still, fans impressed with his early works, marked by engrossing portrayals of Chinese communities as in The Yellow Earth" in 1984, might find his recent inclination toward commercialism disappointing.

Killing is beautifully shot, especially its much-touted love scenes. But like most thrillers, the plot seems a bit absurd and its overall impression is similar to that of a soap opera. Chen's most popular film, Farewell My Concubine (1993), and The Emperor and the Assassin (1999), which was his first big commercial venture backed by multinational sponsors, were essentially artistically elaborate melodramas about frustrated love.

Chen appeared confident about his first English- language project. "I don't feel a great difference between making a film in Hollywood and in China," he said. "I felt comfortable with working with the Western crew. ... We speak the same language, the cinema language." Graham also said she enjoyed working with the Chinese filmmaker, and that he allowed them a lot of spontaneity during the shooting of the sex scenes. What does she think about its `"R-18" (restricted to viewers aged 18 or older) rating in Japan? "I don't think anything's wrong with sexuality," she said. "I'd rather see sexuality than violence" on the screen. Chen claimed that even the Chinese audience would love the racy film-if it were ever to be released at home. "They are conservative together-but in privacy this is what we're doing everyday,"he said with a grin.