Yo Oizumi and Tomoyo Harada to star in "The Happiness of Bread"

by Chris MaGee

Okay, "The Happiness of Bread" might not win any awards for the most compelling title, but Tokyograph is reporting that this upcoming film will have some serious star power to overcome that. Yo Oizumi (above left), star of such films as "After School" and "Suger & Spice", and screen veteran Tomoyo Harada (above right), star of Nobuhiko Obayashi's 1983 screen adaptation "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" will be starring in "Shiawase no Pan (The Happiness of Bread)" as a husband and wife who open up a small bakery in Hokkaido. The film will be helmed by longtime NHK documentary director and now freelance filmmaker Yukiko Mishima. Apparently both actors prepared for their roles by training with real bakers.

We'll have to wait until the fall of 2011 to see what comes out of the filmmaking oven (bad, bad pun, I know) as that's when "Shiawase no Pan" is scheduled to be released in Japanese theatres. Let's hope that if this one gets an English title that the title gets transposed as "The Bread of Happiness". Now that would work.