Crazy Talk
I actually got to meet Youki Kudoh, co-star of this week’s edition of The Forgotten (Sogo Ishii’s hysterical-in-every-sense comedy THE CRAZY FAMILY) at the Puchin Film Festival. She made her debut for Ishii, but may be know to more of you for her role as a Japanese sightseer in Memphis in Jim Jarmusch’s charming MYSTERY TRAIN, or for her role in Takashi Miike’s not quite so charming episode of Masters of Horror, IMPRINT. Or for a number of other movies.
I actually took her picture at the time, but I have no idea what happened to it. Too bad.
A Japanese friend told me Youki Kudoh is kind of a modest cult actor rather than a big star in Japan because her face isn’t considered pretty enough, her features are too big. It seems she’s regarded as a kind of Frank Moran figure. Crazy indeed. Fortunately, she speaks fluent English — and Swedish — and so darts about the world, illuminating it.
shadowplay 
November 17, 2011 at 4:47 pm
What a resumé! I just re-watched Mystery Train in preparation for a trip to Memphis, and she’s pretty much the best thing about it (Tom Noonan excepted). I was also unfortunate enough to see Imprint, in the cinema, which was a fantastically unpleasant way to spend an hour, and also the worst date movie in history (yes, I brought a date to a movie that features a river of aborted foetuses. I’m smooth like that). I’m afraid her performance in that left no impression whatsoever.
November 17, 2011 at 4:56 pm
Well, it’s mostly screaming agony. We fast-forwarded a chunk of it — the plot is brilliantly turned, but we saw no reason to subject ourselves to the agony. Wouldn’t have been able to sit through it at the cinema.
She’s in The Limits of Control also, which might be reason enough for me to watch that one someday.
November 17, 2011 at 7:16 pm
Saw that. Can’t remember a blinking thing about it (apart from Paz de la Huerta in a seethru dress).
November 17, 2011 at 9:34 pm
That’d be memorable, yes. I knew she played a character called Nude, I’m surprised to hear she got as well-dressed as that.
November 17, 2011 at 11:41 pm
I don’t remember her in Limits of Control either, but a lot of the appearances in the movie (cf Tilda Swinton) seemed like improvised cameos without much there there.
November 18, 2011 at 12:27 am
That was my fear, after Broken Flowers, which had a neat plot motor to get from one cameo to the next, but nothing interesting going on once you arrived.
Coffee and Cigarettes is the same thing only without the plot. Jarmusch does seem to mistake interesting guest stars for an interesting filmic experience at times.