On Friday 17th October, a special screening of “Fuku-chan of Fuku Fuku Flats” was held at Aeon Cinema Kyoto Katsuragawa. 

In the cast greeting before the screening, Director Yosuke Fujita and support comedian Slim Club appeared on stage. They talked about the highlights of the film, stories from the shooting and more. 

The kindly Fuku-chan, a 32-year-old man, is played by a woman, actress Miyuki Oshima of comedy trio Mori San Chu. Fuku-chan is a sweet, shy and overweight building painter who lives a simple life. He seems satisfied, but one weakness appears - he can’t deal with the opposite sex. The story of Fuku chan is a touching, funny and insightful tour de force.

Oshima won the Best Actress Award at the 18th Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal in Canada, and the movie has received recognition not only from Japan, but also from abroad. 

There was great interest in the reason why Director Fujita chose Oshima to play the main male character, to which he explained; “When I saw her on TV, she has a hearty character, doing things like sumo wrestling, but I got sensitive feeling from her as well. I thought that she can describe a character in a deep way from all angles.”   

Fujita highly praised Oshima when recalling when actual shooting started, “I believed that she could handle it well off course, but she performed much better than my expectation.”

Recently the film had a screening in Italy, to which Fujita commented, “The reaction was very good. I was impressed how the audience enjoyed even the very detailed points.” “Oshima has soul in her acting,” he said and shared a surprising story. “She became a different sex completely. To do so, she slept on a floor, not on a bed when she slept during the shooting.”

Oshima lost weight because of the shooting for a marathon in another TV program just before the film shooting, so for the movie she gained weight by 8-9 kg. Fujita was very impressed by her “actor’s spirit and professional behavior”.  

In the end, Fujita gave an enthusiastic message. “First of all, I’d like to say please watch Miyuki Oshima and Tatsuo Fukuda, who is the character she played. I’d like to recommend people see the ‘human’ and not just the abstract theme in this work. Because a female played the male lead, it might be taken as a movie of temporary interest, but it’s a comedy I created very seriously.”