From x.verleih.de and MovieMaze.de: Coming soon to a theater not very near you: the German movie adaptation of Jiro Taniguchi's Eisner Award-nominated seinen manga story, A Distant Neighborhood.
From the movie trailer and the description of the film posted on German film sites, this adaptation of Taniguchi's mid-life crisis manga looks like it follows the general gist of the original story. However, instead of a middle-aged Japanese salary man returning to his hometown and magically returning to his life as a 14-year old, Vertraute Fremde (Familiar Strangers) sets the action in a small town in the French mountains.
Another interesting difference between the original Japanese story and this German remake is how they've made Thomas, the middle-aged protagonist a cartoonist, not just a business man. Otherwise, fans of the manga will see much that they'll recognize from Taniguchi's original story, including Hiroshi / Thomas' interactions with his dad, his visits to the neighborhood bar and his tentatively romantic interactions with the prettiest girl in school.
Vertraute Fremde is directed by Sam Garbarski, and stars Pascal Greggory as the older Thomas and Léo Legrand as his 14-year old self. This film has already been shown at Cannes Film Festival, and will be released in Germany on May 20, 2010.
No word on when or if this film will be released in North America, but it'd be very cool if it was, because it'll be fascinating to see how the director and writers have re-imagined this story.
In the meantime, you can watch the trailer (in German, no subtitles, sorry!) check out Kevin Church's review of A Distant Neighborhood Volumes 1 & 2 from Fanfare - Ponent Mon, and preview a few pages from the original seinen manga story at PonentMon.com.
Image credits: © X Verleih AG, © Jiro Taniguchi
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