Sabu, the Japanese director of Venice and Toronto-bound “Arrested Memory,” says the film’s nearly two-decade journey to the screen – after stalled attempts to shoot in Germany, Korea, the U.S. and Japan – left it with more tension and poignancy than the version he first wrote. Variety is unveiling the first trailer for the film. It was really a matter of waiting for the right opportunity and the right timing,” Sabu tells Variety.
The thriller follows a police detective who loses his memory, a premise Sabu used to rework his central character over the years the project spent in development. The film’s protagonist Lee was originally conceived as a corrupt detective before Sabu turned him into a respected, judo-trained officer. However, over the course of 20 years, he lost something important, his convictions gradually began to waver, and eventually he became a corrupt police officer.
That was the original setup,” Sabu says. If we are pursued or attacked, we run away or fight back. Human relationships are always a process of reflecting one another, and those accumulated interactions ultimately shape who we are,” he says.
My comedies are built on tension and release. The more seriously an actor plays a situation, the more humor can emerge from it,” Sabu says. He adds that Juan’s work reshaped the character on the page: “Ethan’s performance added an even greater sense of poignancy to the character as originally written.” Taiwan became the film’s home after the director considered several other countries.
Working across four filmmaking cultures shaped the production and left Sabu wanting more of it. I feel that working with people from different countries and cultures creates the possibility of discovering something new that I could never have imagined on my own.” Sabu drew nearly 2,000 storyboarded shots before production began, then went through 58 versions in the edit. In fact, I expect something to emerge that goes far beyond what I imagined, so I’m completely comfortable with it,” he says.
Asked what he wants cinema to do for an audience after three decades of filmmaking that has spanned action, comedy, horror and fantasy, Sabu points to entertainment above all else. I’ve always wanted to make films that leave people in a slightly better mood than when they started watching,” he says. Sabu already has his next projects lined up.
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