Daisuke Tengan’s The Most Beautiful Night in the World

If you’ve been paying any attention to the news, you’ll know that the greatest problem facing Japan right now is their declining birth rate. That is, not enough Japanese people are having babies. So what’s Japan doing about this national crisis? Well for one, they’re making a movie about it.

Director Daisuke Tengan (Waiting in the Dark), son of legendary filmmaker Shohei Imamura and writer of Audition, has just finished shooting his latest film titled The Most Beautiful Night in the World (Sekai de Ichiban Utsukushii Yoru). The original script written by Tengan himself focuses on a young girl and her hometown, one said to have the highest birth rate in the country.

Tomorowo Taguchi plays the starring role as a newspaper reporter demoted to the town 14 years ago. Ryo Ishibashi is an ex-radical trying to start a “sexual revolution,” and former Takarasienne Sarara Tsukifune plays the gentle “mama” of a snack bar. Other cast members include Shiro Sano, Akira Emoto, Shunsuke Matsuoka, and Yukiya Kitamura.

But here’s the real clincher: the film features a 50 person orgy scene. While this is reminiscent of the 750-person sex scene in Tom Tykwer’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, released last year in Japan, the producers have argued that’s it’s different because it relates to a real national problem. Riiight. I wonder if pornography laws will soften (no pun intended) after this too.

Tokyo Graph