A combination of wild circumstances and fate bring together perhaps the most important and bizarre relationship Rose and Seb will ever experience

Tokyo Rose is a gently strange film with a rather unusual relationship that builds around two characters. Director AJ Ovio based his movie on a true short story he read in a newspaper article a couple of years ago, but his challenge for the adaptation of the story was to find the human element behind such a bizarre situation. AJ brilliantly gets us attached to a rather delinquent young girl and makes us understand the bizarre and intruding decision she makes.

Parallel to Rose’s intrusion we learn about her new ‘landlords’ problems and difficulties. The story slowly evolves from Rose’s need to find shelter into becoming aware of Seb’s problems and trying to help the man she never met.

I knew I wanted to tell an evolving story. Many student shorts work well with a ‘set up, pay off’ formula but I wanted to attempt something a little different

The film suffers a slightly from a lack of pace and absence of a climactic moments, however we never lose interest in the story or character and often leaves us on the tip of our toes when she comes close to getting caught. The film was intended to be 25 minutes long, but they struggled to get a good flow during editing, which led them to sacrifice an entire subplot story on the development of the main character Rose. What AJ learned from this is was to trust the audience from the writing stage, which could be a good lesson for anyone.

Tokyo Rose shows us the type of quality film that can be done with a low budget. With mostly donated props the film’s total expenses came in just moderately under 700$.

Local newspaper article on the film’s upcoming film festival screening:
http://www.viewnews.com/2009/VIEW-Jun-09-Tue-2009/East/29187513.html

ajovio.com