Udine 2025 Interview: Hideo Jojo Talks Centering Women in Pink Cinema and Beyond
At first glance, Hideo Jojo has a surprising filmography.
A prolific V-cinema director of pink films since 2003 -- with titles such as Big Bad Mama-san, Married Women Who Want A Taste, and Air Sex -- Jojo has found big screen commercial success in recent years with character-driven ensemble dramas that are sweeter in sensibility. There's ensemble bleachers snapshot On The Edge Of Their Seats (a personal favourite of mine), revenge drama Thorns of Love, and schoolgirl slice-of-life After School Angler Club, to name but a few.
Jojo arrives at the Far East Film Festival this year with two new films. The first to screen is rural thriller Welcome to the Village, in which a newly-moved young couple are set upon by increasingly intrusive neighbours. The second is knife-twisting social drama A Bad Summer, in which a well-meaning but naive bureaucrat becomes entangled with a troubled young woman, who is being blackmailed by his corrupt associate.
In a brief but candid conversation, we discuss Jojo's pink film origins and the director's understanding of the women that he places so centrally on screen.
You've made a lot of pink films. Has that background influenced your approach to your non-pink filmmaking? A BAD SUMMER has a grounded quality, and a wiseness about sexuality that perhaps owes something to that experience.
Yes, definitely. The experience that I cultivated with pink movies has now become part of me. I've taken on tens and hundreds of these productions, so they have shaped my perception in some way.
It's not easy to elaborate on this, but what I can tell you is that you can take on a pink movie or you can take on a normal movie, but either way you're taking on a movie. Because in both, you don't just have sex scenes -- you have also other kinds of scenes.
Even if over the years I've had the possibility to improve conditions or have more money, one thing has remained the same in my directing -- which is that I make the movies that I want to make, and I film the movies that I want to film. So, by all means, what I cultivated with my experience with pink movies is still prominent in my filmmaking.
You're good at focusing female characters in your films, and at lending a strong interiority and truth to those characters. Where does that stem from? Is it from the actresses that you work with, or from an empathic approach to directing?
I myself, of course, am a man. So perhaps on some level I'm not able to fully understand the feelings of women. But I do have to say that I've had the chance to take on so many pink movies and erotic movies, and in this cinema, the woman is always the centre.
Although these films are often considered for their depictions of sexuality, you must always consider the inner aspect. Perhaps considering this inner aspect gave these depictions the strength that you refer to. Even if the sex scenes are many, the emotional aspect of them is inextricable from the sex act.
Welcome to the Village and A Bad Summer premiered at the 57th Far East Film Festival in Udine on the 25th and 27th April respectively.
