Two years ago, Isabel Coixet was at the Tokyo Cinema Festival promoting The secret life of words. While out on a walk around the city's fish market, the Barcelona director became lost in the area behind the market buildings.

There she saw a beautiful young girl cleaning a tuna fish stall. The director wanted to take a photo of her but the girl refused. "That was when I started to envisage the story of Map of the sounds of Tokyo", explains Coixet.

The most dramatic film about dual identity

Coixet's latest production explains the story of Ryu (Rinko Kikuchi), a solitary girl who works in the Tokyo fish market and is also a hired killer, and of David (Sergi López), a Spaniard who owns a wine cellar in the Japanese capital and whose partner has just commited suicide.

Min Tanaka is the narrator and plays a sound engineer. He is obsessed with the sounds of the city and with Ryu. He provides the counterpoint to this story, basically about two people, to be wrapped up this Thursday in Barcelona.

Coixet disperses these fish to create a whole that she herself defines as a "romantic and sentimental thriller". The director goes so far as to state that this is "the most dramatic film" that she has ever made. She also considers it to be "a dual identity drama".

Imaginatively sexual script

"It is also the film that has the most sex scenes", explains Coixet. With regard to this aspect, Sergi López says that "the sexual scriptwriting is amazing. The script is imaginatively sexual, with clear ideas and very well written. Things really happen, it does not just say 'they make passionate love'".

A gift for Sergi López

López wants to make it clear that for him, this project has been like "an early Christmas gift", as filming began before Christmas. "I actually feel guilty for how lucky I am to have such an huge project" the actor said.

Rinko Kikuchi, nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Babel, explained that doing this film has given him the chance to work in Europe after participating in various American productions.

Extraordinary adventure

Map of the sounds of Tokyo, which will have its premiere in 2009, has been "an extraordinary adventure" for its director and leading actors "as we have communicated with a different culture and understood each other", according to Isabel Coixet herself.