Tetsuya Chihara has been a leading figure in Japanese design and advertising as art director of his design studio Lemon Life Inc. His clients have included global brands like Adidas Originals, H&M, Nissin Cup Noodles and Onitsuka Tiger. With his debut feature film Ice Cream Fever, he made the crossover into film directing, adapting a short story from Akutagawa Prize-winning author Mieko Kawakami’s 2013 book Ai no yume to ka (愛の夢とか, Dreams of Love, etc.).
The film cheekily announces itself with its opening title card “Ceci n’est pas un film”, a reference to René Magritte’s iconic surrealist painting, The Treachery of Images (1929), setting the tone for what we are to expect. Ice Cream Fever’s playful title evokes a whimsical, light-hearted and distinctly modern film that presents intertwining vignettes of various women as their lives intersect around the colourful and neon-lit Shibuya Million Ice Cream Shop. We witness their different relationships with each other: romantic, desirous, familial, platonic etc. across the urban jungle that is Tokyo. Ice Cream Fever is not here to make grand philosophical declarations. Rather, it embodies the sweet yet fleeting nature of ice cream, and how its simplicity is part of the everyday joys we can find in life. Coupled with a playful and irreverent style, yet detailed and observant direction of its characters, Tetsuya Chihara announces himself as a unique new voice in Japanese filmmaking.
Ahead of its North American premiere as part of Japan Cuts 2024 that will be accompanied with a director Q&A session, we had a wonderful chat with Tetsuya Chihara, assisted by translator Monika Uchiyama on his journey as a designer turned filmmaker, and how Ice Cream Fever is a culmination of all his passions and creative collaborations.
The below interview has been edited for clarity.
You were originally an art director in advertising and fashion. Can you tell us the story of how you became a film director?
I’ve always loved film, and as a child, I would say one of my dreams was to be involved in filmmaking somehow. On that journey, I learned about the designer Saul Bass, who in addition to being a designer, designed the title sequences for films. That was such an eye-opening thing to learn. So then I decided to become a graphic designer and that kind of started my journey.
Opening title card for Ice Cream Fever, opening title card of Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock) designed by Saul Bass
That’s so interesting, because my background is also in graphic design, and I’ve always been inspired by Saul Bass because of my love of cinema. The colourful and quirky graphic elements is one of the elements that makes the film stand out, and now that you mention him as an influence, I can really see the influence. So I have to ask how you came to develop your style?
When I decided to become a film director—this was actually about five years ago, I thought about how there were so many film directors out there, and it wouldn’t be interesting for me to just do what other directors would do. So I thought about how I might bring my design background into filmmaking, and how I might bring in these graphic design elements into my films.
Ice Cream Fever is your first feature length film, and it was adapted from a short story. What was it about Mieko Kawakami’s short story that you thought would be attractive to make into a film?
Mieko Kawakami has been a friend of mine for about fifteen years now, and I had previously designed some of the book covers for her novels, so I had always been telling her about my dream to become a film director. When I actually decided and made the decision, she was actually one of the first people that I called up. I didn’t want to make a film that was an emotional, moving story about some kind of moving event. I was more interested in something more ordinary and everyday. As I was telling her this, she pulled out the short story “Ice Cream Fever” and said, “I think this might be what you’re looking for,” and it definitely was.
Of course I wanted to make a feature length film, but the story is only seven pages long, so the two of us talked and riffed on different ideas to expand on something that could be made into a feature length film.
(Writer’s Note: Ice Cream Fever is preceded by an accompanying short film, I Scream Fever that premiered in 2023 and features most of the same actors as the feature length film, with the focus on the characters played by Utaha of Wednesday Campanella and Kotona Minami)
I think this is a film a lot of women will enjoy as it features female friendships, romances, sisters, mother and daughters, aunts and nieces. What made you interested in making a film about all types of different women and their relationships with one another?
Mieko Kawakami and I have worked together for about seven to eight years on campaigns for a Japanese lingerie brand “une nana cool” which translates to “a cool girl” in French. The overarching message of the branding campaigns are to celebrate girls’ lives. Having been in conversation with Kawakami for many years, I learned a lot from Kawakami about women’s lives, their positions in society, and how women have to exist in a patriarchal society. These are themes that she has constantly thought about and put into words in her novels and writing. I have to say, she is a major influence in my desire to make this film. I wanted to think about how I could make a film where women are the actual main characters. So you think about stories like Snow White or Cinderella where the woman is a protagonist, but in the end, the prince becomes the more central and active character of the story. In this film, I wanted to be very careful about how women’s lives are depicted, and how they might be shown in a very truthful or central way.
When I take walks with Mieko Kawakami, something interesting that I notice is that she is always expressing anger towards men. One time, we rode the train together and she pointed to the sign that says “Beware of gropers” and said, “Don’t you think this is strange?” And I said, “Oh I don’t know, what’s strange about that?” She said, “Don’t you think it is strange that women have to be careful about gropers, and that the sign should actually say that men shouldn’t grope women?” She told me she wants me to become the kind of person that notices that kind of inequality between men and women. Through her I learned about how this male-centered society has made it difficult for women to exist, and so those are the things that I’m often thinking about.
Hearing this, one of the things that occurred to me was that there are almost no men at all in this film! It’s interesting to hear about the connection in fashion that you and Mieko Kawakami have because to me, one of the most outstanding parts of the film was the styling of the film, down to the hair and makeup. Even the supporting characters like the bathhouse lady Harue’s sweaters that feature different famous characters. And of course, in your cast, you have very stylish people like Serena and Utaha. Can you talk about how the styling process was for all the characters?
The stylist that I worked with on this film is someone named Kumiko Iijima, who’s very well-known as a stylist in Japan. She rarely works on films, she really is so sought after in the fashion world. She’s someone who also makes costumes for Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, who’s a very famous popstar. I think that in making films, there’s kind of an idea of how a film should look. But for me personally, I was always very inspired by a film that I saw when I was much younger, which was Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. In that film, he did not cast regular actors, and the main character is played by David Bowie, the musician, and he acts opposite Ryuichi Sakamoto, who is a very famous composer, and then of course you have ‘Beat’ Takeshi [Kitano], who is a comedian. So that’s when I realised that if the person fits the theme or the role, you should look really broadly for the types of people to be in your films. And so, in this film, you have musicians and models. I discussed with Iijima-san, the stylist, how each of these characters’ personalities could also be expressed through their fashion. A regular film might lean towards realism in the way people dressed, but I wanted to think more expansively, and make it more of a fashionable film to make it more entertaining as well.
Speaking of casting, all the actresses in the film are very striking in their own ways. Riho Yoshioka is perhaps the most well-known of all the actresses, Serena Motola is such a famous fashion model, and Utaha is known for being part of the music group Wednesday Campanella. What was the casting process like?
The casting process was actually quite simple. I picked up the phone and called them and asked. The first person I called was actually Serena Motola, because she’s someone I’ve worked with before as an art director in fashion. Sometimes I’ve always noticed her expressions, and how she holds and expresses herself, it’s not very ‘actress-like’. She’s very much a model, so I thought including her in the film would include a bit of ‘strangeness’ in the film that is desired. The lead is Riho Yoshioka, and she’s someone I’ve worked with every year—I design her calendars, and so she’s someone that I’m familiar with and asked to be the lead. Other people that I included in the film that are musicians are people who I’ve designed the album covers for, or that I’ve done their stage design before. So everyone in the cast, I’m familiar with their characteristics and what makes them interesting individuals in my capacity as a designer, and that was what made it possible for me to select them and give them a call to ask them to be in my film.
Seeing as how you are so familiar with all the actresses in the film, would you say that the characters were written around them?
Not really, because the script was written before the casting and so when it came time to figure out who would play the characters, I was trying to figure out who I knew in my life that I believe would fit the different characters. So if the character was right for someone in my life like a friend, or family member, or even my wife, then that’s who I might have cast. I just knew that I didn’t want to necessarily cast actors, and just try to find people who fit the roles.
As we are talking about characters, the ice cream shop “Shibuya Million” in the film is almost like a character itself, with its bright colours, and unique names of the flavours of the ice cream like Peppermint Splash and Crazy Marble? How did you develop the concept of the shop?
Since the story was recommended by Mieko Kawakami, it wasn’t my original idea to make a story about an ice cream shop. But once I knew this was the short story that I wanted to adapt, and that ice cream would be one of the central themes, I was really excited because I think [ice cream] lends itself to be very colourful and interesting, design-wise. Ice cream can also be a metaphor, and it can also be a very graphic quality or shape. I was thinking about the image of Serena Motola walking down the street, and if she’s holding an ice cream cone, that already creates a kind of visual interest. It looks stylish or fashionable. So I knew that the ice cream shop was going to be a place where I could show my strengths as a designer and get in nitty gritty with how colourful and designed it could be.
I’ve also seen the short film I Scream Fever that was released last year and accompanies this film. In the short film, Utaha’s character is more of the main character there, along with the niece Miwa, whereas she has a smaller role in the full length film. Are there any thoughts of making a full length version of that short film and what are your future projects?
Every character in Ice Cream Fever is so interesting that it’s really tempting to write a spin-off for every single one of them. But actually I already have a new project with a very similar theme that I’m currently working on. Unfortunately I can’t say very much about it, but I hope that you’ll be excited about it when it comes out.