100%
Sure, it’s very 2020 but actor Sakura Ando is 100% that bitch. We say that with all the love.
Sakura Ando
Actor Sakura Ando is a bad bitch. Though she speaks English, a translator breaks that down in Japanese – it’s a loan word, it’s practically the same thing – and Ando smirks a bit, looking genuinely perplexed about how that could possibly refer to her. But she is. In an industry top heavy with schmaltzy romances, time travellilng fantasy-romances and weepie tragic romances – are you sensing a pattern here? – Ando is a badass breath of fresh air, whether she meant to be or not. Chances are extremely high that if you sit down to watch a film she’s in, it will be free of monosyllabic “communications”, stunted emotions (looking at you, Narratage), contrivances (First Kiss) and women who are decidedly not charming (A Bride for Rip Van Winkle) and who suck mightily at life.
Ando is classy enough not to shit talk her peers (in fairness, we’re not trying to either) and ponders her image for just a second. “I think I work on instinct,” she begins, kicking off her shoes and getting comfortably cross-legged on a lounge chair. “Based on my past experiences overseas, I’ve realised I’m not really an ‘intellectual’; I don’t make brainy decisions. I’m more visceral and emotional. I learn and perform based on body language and feeling. And to be honest I’ve never thought about what audiences might think of my performance when picking films. You don’t have to think anything, and if you respond, great. But I didn’t start out aiming to be a movie star – or a maverick.”
Either way, here she is.
Ando plays characters who most definitely do not suck at life, and if they do there’s a larger artistic purpose to it. Ando is one of the Hong Kong International Film Festival’s focus artists this year, and the mini-retrospective of her work includes Masato Harada’s Bad Lands, Masaharu Take’s 100 Yen Love, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters and her author-director sister Momoko’s 0.5mm. She didn’t really have a hand in selecting the films, but she does agree these were key milestones in her career. As a bonus, if you need proof she’s a badass – smart, sexy, driven, willing to raise a middle finger to the system – the four make for strong evidence.
In the crime thriller Bad Lands Ando was Neri, an Osaka grifter living in the margins, navigating a crazily complex underworld web in order to extricate herself and her brother from the life. For the gritty, realist 100 Yen Love (above, left, remade in China as YOLO) Ando played Ichiko Saito, a down on her luck woman whose sexual assault kick-starts boxing lessons that transform her life. It has nothing to do with fitting into a slinky ball gown. The Palme d'Or-winning Shoplifters (below, left) saw Ando play Nobuyo Shibata and humanise Japan’s working poor as the de facto matriarch of a family of dishonest thieves with more family bonds than most of us. And in her sister Momoko’s epic, 196-minute 0.5mm (right) – hey, it’s shorter than The Brutalist – she’s Sawa Yamagishi in a career highlight that marries elderly isolation and the isolating gig economy in one film; Ando was a travelling nurse that hustles old dudes. Sadly not on the docket is Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One (above, right), where she’s Sumiko Ota, a hardened survivor of the Second World War carpet bombing of Tokyo and the reluctant guardian of the baby adopted by her guilt-wracked neighbour. You will not find any OLs, pushovers, heartsick romantics or pastry chefs or some shit. Of her litany of what Hollywood loves to call “strong female characters” (cringe) Ando is fulfilling that promise by accident, choosing characters, filmmakers and stories that connect with her in the moment. “When I was really, really young I already knew I wanted to pursue performance. I see myself on a journey that’s about timing. Does this film fit my life in this moment?”
Ando isn’t looking to follow in her sister’s footsteps to direct, and she’s on a bit of a sabbatical right now; she’s raising a daughter. “Parenting and shooting at the same time is really difficult for me, especially in Japan,” she says. Working mothers? Badass. That said, her foray to Hong Kong put actor-writer-director and recluse Stephen Chow on her bucket list of filmmakers to work with. But Ando is agnostic, and is hesitant to limit her options, whatever they may look like.
“It can be very sensitive sometimes to think politically about whether or not I want to work with someone. What are their thoughts? Do I agree? Is the culture too distinct from me personally,” she reasons, thinking carefully and responding slowly. Ando admits she struggled with her values in the past but is more open to major differences now. An echo chamber, she argues, is a bad idea. “If I’m always in my own value set I’m not learning. Making a movie teaches you so much people and cultures. Working with people who are completely different from me, or who hold different views or beliefs broadens your values and how you view the world. It would be a waste to say no.” So how about working with, oh, say, Mel Gibson? She balks and hesitates, glancing around the room ever so slightly nervously. Even badasses have a line in the sand.
Where we were
The Mira Hong Kong, TST • Hong Kong International Film Festival
Hong Kong • April 11, 2025