As You Like It (2006 film) British lady at the outpost covers her face modestly with a fan, and styles her hair reminiscently Japanese. When the banished characters travel to the Forest of Arden, both Japanese and western actors portray its inhabitants: Phoebe and William are Japanese, Corin and Audrey are European, while Silvius is a European who wears Japanese clothes. Black British actors play the de Boys brothers, Orlando and Oliver. When Orlando fights not merely a wrestler, it is indeed a sumo wrestler. Branagh invented a prologue in which ninja warriors attack Duke Senior's family as it attends a performance of Kabuki theatre. Branagh's
As You Like It (2006 film) prologue defines exactly the moment that Duke Frederick usurps his brother's kingdom, a moment that Shakespeare himself did not. The epilogue deliberately interrupts the closing credits with Rosalind's speech, as the camera pans to see Rosalind's actor, Bryce Dallas Howard, walking to her dressing trailer on the film's location. Despite the cultural transposition, Shakespeare's language and the names of his characters remain the same. The film closely follows Shakespeare's plot. Some critics praised the setting. Others found it useless and irrelevant, since few of the characters are Japanese. The film was released theatrically in Italy on 1 September 2006, in