Runway to Romance: Kōki Steals Hearts in New Film ‘Touch’

At the start of Baltasar Kormákur’s new film “Touch,” it is March 2020, and Kristofer, an Icelandic widower, decides it is time to track down his long-lost first love. The viewer soon meets the woman he is searching for: Miko. Fifty years before embarking on his international journey — with a terminal illness and onset of a pandemic both looming — Kristofer is a college dropout looking for a job in the kitchen of a Japanese restaurant in London. The sight of the chef’s daughter, Miko, walking through the front door leaves him smitten.

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Watching the couple’s romance unfold onscreen similarly left Kōki, who stars as the young Miko in the film, speechless.

“It was really emotional and touching. And I really loved how Baltasar juggled between the past and present,” says the actress, at home in Tokyo on the day of the film’s Stateside release. “I felt like I was having a really big flashback of myself as well, about all the memories of shooting.”

The 21-year-old Japanese model and actress stars in the romantic drama, based on a novel by Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson, as a young transplant from Hiroshima living in London during the early ’70s. The film is told through parallel timelines — in the present, Kristofer flies to London and Japan to find out what happened to Miko, who vanished without notice 50 years earlier. Interspersed are scenes of their young romance unfolding from within the restaurant.

“When I read the novel first, I was completely captured by it. I couldn’t stop reading,” Kōki says. “And I thought it was realistic — that a moment you have with someone can change your life and it can mean so much to you, and the melancholy of time and how time changes your appearance — or, for example, Nippon [the restaurant] changing into a tattoo parlor. But time doesn’t change one’s emotions and memories.”

As a period piece, the 2020 scenes are marked by mask-wearing, and the early ’70s defined both by the youth political sentiment and sartorial landscape.

“There was a phrase in the script where one of her coworkers says, ‘Maybe your skirt is too short,’ and she says like, ‘Oh, this is not Japan anymore.’ She’s really trying to develop in the new society that she is in, and you can see that by the outfit as well,” Kōki says of the role that her character’s costumes played in setting the scene. “Also how her outfit links with Kristofer, you can already see that the link [of their relationship] is happening gradually.”

Kōki is already well-versed in the power of fashion. She launched her career as a model when she was named Bulgari ’s first Japanese and youngest ambassador in 2018, and has worked with brands including Chanel , Valentino, Coach, Louis Vuitton and Estée Lauder.

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“Being able to work with different brands from different countries really taught me a lot about culture, and also the different aspects of fashion — like how fashion can be inspirational, and how fashion can really make people feel emotions and give people confidence,” she adds. “So it has a really vast and strong influence. Fashion is something that I really am passionate about.”

Although she only recently launched her acting career — “Touch” is her second film, and her first English-language project — she was exposed to the industry from a young age through her parents. Her father, Takuya Kimura, is an actor and former member of J-pop boy band SMAP, and her mother is singer Shizuka Kudo.

“Since I was small, watching my dad act and perform, I was always really interested in acting,” Kōki says. “I had this feeling that ‘Oh, I want to become like him,’ and want to be able to have the audience think in certain ways or feel this certain emotion or message. I think watching my dad perform and act had a huge impact on me.”

Earlier this year, she filmed upcoming survivor-thriller “Tornado,” an homage to the samurai film genre, alongside costars Jack Lowden and Tim Roth in Edinburgh, Scotland. Later this summer, she’ll head out to begin filming her first series project, not yet announced.

“I would love to continue challenging myself in different roles, in different genres, different countries,” Kōki says. “Continue challenging myself — that’s my ultimate goal.”

She’ll have another opportunity to revisit “Touch” in January, when the film is set to be released in Japan.

“I’m really happy that this special piece, that is like a treasure in my heart, can be shared with such a vast cultural audience,” she says. “I’m excited to hear about the different opinions and thoughts they have after seeing the movie.”

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