Sins of the fathers

Close to two decades ago, Shinji Aoyama burst onto the Japanese film scene when his debut feature, Helpless, won the award for best film and he was named best new director at the 1997 Japanese Professional Movie Awards. Three years later, his Eureka won the International Critic's Prize (Fipresci) and Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at Cannes, and he became one of the more well-known contemporary Japanese names on the international film festival circuit.

In the years since, Aoyama has carved out a multifaceted career as screenwriter, editor, music composer, film critic and novelist as well as a director whose output has been marked by thought-provoking creativity. His works have also garnered the most notable awards at the Locarno International Film Festival: Tokyo Park took the Golden Leopard Special Jury Prize in 2011 and his latest offering, Backwater, was granted the award for best film by the Junior Jury. The 49-year-old filmmaker was also named best director by the Swiss critics' federation this past August.

In the Swiss city that's host to one of the world's oldest film festivals, Aoyama says Backwater is his most personal film to date. "When I read the story for the first time, the image of the mother depicted in the book immediately reminded me of my own mother's features," he says. "If I consider my deeper motives for making this film, I would say I most probably shot it to honour my mother's memory. She passed away in June last year. She was against the war and against the emperor. Backwater is dedicated to her."

A bleak tale of violence, blood inheritance, rough sex and vengeance, the film is an adaptation of Shinya Tanaka's novella, with which it shares the same Japanese title ( Tomogui, which refers to mutual destruction). Aoyama recalls how, when he read Tanaka's grim tale of the Shinogaki family who reside in a rundown country town crossed by a polluted river, he immediately vowed that he, and no one else, would make a movie of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize-winning work.

The atmosphere, settings and themes of Tanaka's story deeply affected and moved Aoyama. "Shinya Tanaka and I originally came from almost the same region," the director says, "so I understand the ambience he describes."

Choosing to dwell on the more physical aspects of Tanaka's story about the uncontrolled sexual drive of Madoka (Ken Mitsuishi), and the violence he dishes out to every woman who crosses his path, the filmmaker entrusted the writing of the screenplay to Haruhiko Arai, a veteran screenwriter with experience working on Nikkatsu "Roman Porno" films of the 1970s and 1980s.

Apart from the end of the story, Arai's version sticks quite faithfully to the original plot. The film bluntly shows how a man's basest instincts of domination, sexual lust and sadism can get the upper hand in his behaviour towards women, with tragic consequences.