Violence is golden

Takeshi Kitano remembers the wariness he felt throughout the 1990s when he was forced to justify his films' on-screen carnage in nearly every interview he did. It was a period during which he was known on the international film-festival circuit for directing mobster flicks such as Boiling Point, Sonatine, Hana-bi and Brothers.

'I had to talk to journalists and critics, and they asked me why there were all these depictions of violence in my movies, and I had to talk about violence all the time,' he says, his brow furrowed.

'So it kind of gets tiring after many years, and I decided to put that side of my career on hold and explore a different type of movie.'

What followed was a decade in which he steered clear of yakuza-related narratives and made a romance (Dolls), a samurai drama (Zatoichi) and then what he describes as a semi-autobiographical trilogy (Takeshis', Glory to the Filmmaker! and Achilles and the Tortoise), in which he lays bare his own self-doubts through comedies driven by obsessively creative characters (actors, directors and painters, respectively).

The Japanese director - who began his acting career as a comedian - seems to have mellowed as he moves into his 60s, but violence is at the core of our conversation when we meet in a vast ballroom at Cannes' Martinez Hotel where he is holding court for an afternoon to talk about his latest film, Outrage.

True to its title, the film has provoked howling indignation from critics since it premiered at the French city's annual film festival.