On May 4th, it was revealed that the up-and-coming actress Kiritani Mirei will be appearing in the upcoming romance film "Atarashii Kutsu wo Kawanakucha" starring Nakayama Miho and Mukai Osamu.

"Atarashii Kutsu wo Kawanakucha" tells the 3-day love story between the photographer 'Yagami Sen' (Mukai) and the freelance writer 'Teshigawara Aoi' (Nakayama), who meet in Paris by chance. While Aoi is living in Paris, Sen visits the city for a short vacation along with his happy-go-lucky younger sister 'Suzume' (Kiritani). Although Kiritani is pretty much abandoning her brother in order to roam around Paris, she plays an important part in kicking off the love story between Aoi and Sen. However, Suzume's ulterior motive for the trip was to meet her boyfriend 'Kango', played by Ayano Go, whom she's been having a long distance relationship with. In other words, we can look forward to a total of two love stories in the movie.

Scriptwriter Kitagawa Eriko ("Halfway"), who also was in charge of the direction, commented on Kiritani, stating, "She's exactly the cute-yet-bothersome younger sister type of girl." She added, "We did have a script, but I told her that it's okay to say whatever comes to her mind and so we ended up doing a lot of ad-libbing." Despite such an usual direction, Kiritani happily looked back on the filming and commented, "It was a lot of fun and I had a lot of discussions with my film partner Ayano Go."

Producer Iwai Shunji praised Kiritani as well. "Even though it suddenly turned into ad-libbing with no real boundary line during the midst of filming, she continued to deliver and wasn't irritated by the director's absurd direction. She just smoothly and nicely responded to her orders."

The filming was done in Paris for two weeks mid-March and marked the first time for the young Kiritani to film abroad. She said, "If I would describe the location, it will be just the word 'Romantic' or 'Beautiful'. Behind us, we had this beautiful scenery with the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Seine. It's all thanks to the scenery of Paris that we were able to film such a beautiful love story." It's said that the whole experience was so great for the actress and filled her with such a sense of accomplishment that she ended up shedding tears at the end of the filming.

Kitagawa was impressed with her performance, "I think she has shown us a completely different side of her this time." This seems to be the result of the extensive ad-libbing, because Kiritani, herself, also said, "I hope that everyone will enjoy the atmosphere which allowed me to stay completely natural with my expressions."

"Atarashii Kutsu wo Kawanakucha" is set for a nationwide release in October.

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Source: Cinema Today