Shinji Aoyama Returns With TOKYO KOEN

It has been four years since we last saw a feature film from former Kiyoshi Kurosawa protege Shinji Aoyama. For some filmmakers that wouldn't be a very significant gap but for the prolific Aoyama - who directed eighteen films between 1995 and 2007 - that's a very long time, indeed.

Aoyama's career has been a diverse one, moving from his playful early genre efforts to his breakout drama Eureka to titles that bridge the two worlds. So the question now - as it usually is with Aoyama - is what sort of mood is he in this time? And the answer appears to be something of a hybrid.

Scheduled for a June release in Japan, Tokyo Koen is very much in the smaller, arthouse stream of Aoyama's work. But it also feels quite playful, which is something we haven't been able to say recently of the director of Sad Vacation and Crickets. The story revolves around a young man who is hired to follow and photograph a young woman in a park and the impact this unusual job has on his life. It's the sort of premise that could easily have been played in an ultra serious stalker-for-hire vein but Aoyama's touch here appears far lighter. Check the trailer below.