Hideki Takeuchi's comedy Thermae Romae II is aimed at international viewers

Hideki Takeuchi's Thermae Romae (2012) played to turn-away crowds at its world premiere at Udine's Far East Film Festival two years ago. It went on to win the My Movies award, decided by internet voters. Takeuchi returned to the northern Italian city this year to present the sequel to the hit Japanese comedy about a bathhouse architect in ancient Rome who travels in time to present-day Japan.

The closing film at Udine this year, Thermae Romae II also netted a My Movies award. But when I interviewed Takeuchi in a quiet corner of the cavernous Teatro Nuovo Giovanni, the festival's 1,200-seat main venue, he was wondering whether his new film would receive the same enthusiastic response as its predecessor.

As it turned out, not only did it win a big round of applause at its festival screening, it went on to earn more in its April 26 to 27 opening weekend in Japan than the first Thermae Romae, which ended up with domestic box office takings of US$59 million.

Takeuchi had been amazed at the original Thermae Romae's reception at Udine, and in other overseas territories. "It was beyond anything I had expected," he says. "I had thought of it as a completely domestic film, one that only Japanese people would understand. I'd made it without thinking of the overseas audience at all, but the laughs were bigger abroad than in Japan.

"People in Italy and Brazil were looking at the sento [Japanese-style bathhouses] and the latest Japanese toilets with the same perspective as [the film's protagonist] Lucius. They were seeing them with the same fresh eyes as this ancient Roman."

Based on a bestselling manga by Mari Yamazaki, the two Thermae Romae films have similar storylines: Faced with a new professional challenge, earnest, workaholic hero Lucius Modestus (Hiroshi Abe) slides into a bath to think - and is sucked into a watery time tunnel.