Directed by Guillaume Senez, “A Missing Part” follows the fight of a father played by Romain Duris to find his daughter in Japan. To be discovered at the cinema.
Six years after Our battles, Romain Duris reunites with director Guillaume Senez. In A Missing Part, the actor plays a taxi driver in Japan looking for his daughter who he lost custody of several years ago. His struggle joins that of another character, played by Judith Chemla, who struggles to see her son again.
This drama focuses on a real problem: childcare in Japan which differs in every way from the French system. In the country, in the event of separation, the courts authorize neither shared custody nor visiting rights. Many parents are therefore completely deprived of their children until they reach the age of majority.
The director estimates the number of children at 150,000.elevated.es” by one of the two parents in Japan and this, every year. To construct the story of the film, the filmmaker and Romain Duris met with affected people, including Vincent Fichot, who went on hunger strike during the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
A cultural gap
A missing part also highlights the cultural gap between France and Japan. French parents feel all the more trapped as they have to fight against a system they consider unfair.
On screen, Romain Duris plays many scenes in Japanese. This is the first time that the actor plays a character in this language in cinema. With the help of a coach, he spent several months learning Japanese. If the French dialogues could be improvised, those in Japanese were well written.
“His Japanese was so goodlaughs the director on France Inter. It was no longer expat Japanese, so he had to unlearn everything and add grammatical errors. Once immersed on site, he was able to pick up things on the tongue and he amazed us on set.”
A missing part of Guillaume Senez can be discovered in the cinema.
