Sûpâ no onna

What a delightful and bonkers feel good film! I think if this film were done in America, it would be extremely mediocre, but I think Japanese director Juzo Itami knows when to be subtle and when to be bonkers.

Just the kind of breezy, relaxed, funny, and even heartwarming film I needed tonight. Supermarket Woman is quite simply about a savvy middle-aged woman helping to revive a struggling supermarket, who are under extra threat by a new, larger store recently opening up nearby.

It's a very low-stakes movie, but you still come to care for the characters and the story. It's just never stressful or feels like it's playing much for drama, which is nice. Tonally, it's just about all comedy, but it never pushes things too far too often to the point where it feels like it's taking place in another reality entirely.

It's terrible to read about what happened to the director - he was apparently killed by the yakuza because of how he featured them in one of his movies. I've liked everything of his I've seen to some extent, but Supermarket Woman might be up there as his best or second best (personally speaking), and it's definitely his most consistently funny and entertaining.

It might help to have worked in a supermarket at some point before watching this, too. There are quite a few moments sprinkled throughout that feel very relatable.

This is exceptionally Japanese flavored movie, and I'm not sure if the underlying culture is appreciated by audiences outside of Japan.

Hanako (Nobuko Miyamoto) loves super (Japanese for supermarket). One day she meets Goro (Masahiko Tsugawa) at his rival super market Yasu Uri no Daimao ( which roughly translates to Demon King of Discount). She points out to Goro all the faults of the store. Then Goro asks Hanako to come and check out another store. Hanako points out all the faults of that store too. The store turns out to be Goro's own store. Goro asks Hanako to help him turn the business around. Hanako accepts and becomes the head of cash register. She starts to modify the way business is done at the store, and gradually, the store starts seeing more and more customers.

Itami's movie portrays people in compromising position in a comical way. This movie shows the underlying business culture of Japanese supermarkets. Dated meat are ground into ground beef, cutlet that didn't sell yesterday are packed into bento lunch, they unpack yesterday's food and repacks it again and tacks a new date to it. All this to save money. Hanako opposes these business practices head on, and transforms the store into epitome of well run business. But she also encounters many difficult oppositions.

The movie follows the usual Itami's formula where hard working character portrayed by Miyamoto brings success to the business run by Tsugawa. The details are so interesting, it keeps you involved in the story. Some of the ways people react is difficult to understand because it's so Japanese culture specific. Even then the movie is entertaining, and intriguing.

One of the last movies made by Itami is a good production with many interesting plots.

Juzo Itami's penultimate film Supermarket Woman has all the hallmarks of a movie intentionally trying to position itself for cult classic adoration from its quirky premise to the film's comic book-like aesthetic in terms of both its visuals as well as the comiclly clear-cut distinction of good-guys and bad-guys. Above all, Supermarket Woman feels like a film in which its visual motifs were created with the intention of selling real-world merchandise. I'd happily buy t-shirts with the logos of fictional supermarket rivals Honest Mart and Discount Demon.

The noble but failing Honest Mart is struggling against its absurdly evil rival Discount Demon, a supermarket run like a militaristic operation out of Imperial Japan (with their business meetings emitting strong Yakuza vibes). Discount Demon is the Chum Bucket to the Krusty Krab or Mondo Burger to Good Burger, thus it takes the ever-fabulous Nobuko Miyamoto as Hanako Inoue to use her womanly, housewife intuition to reinvigorate Honest Mart. Miyamoto's impeccable comic timing both physical and verbal has a real sense of contagious enthusiasm. Much of the sheer fun within Supermarket Woman comes from the screwball comedy-like antics of Hanako and her co-workers as they try to please customers and right various wrongs, from gathering hoards of shopping carts left in the parking lot to dealing with frustrated Karens on the verge of asking for the manager. Equally as memorable is Miyamoto's wardrobe of bright, contrasting colours. Even when she wears an informal blazer it is accompanied alongside tartan trousers and sneakers, in keeping with a character who never takes herself too seriously.

Just how accurate a reflection is Supermarket Woman of Japanese commerce in the post-bubble 1990s? It is unique to observe a wholly independent supermarket that doesn't trade under a franchise name (something which I've never even seen in my own country). This is emblematic of the world Supermarket Woman inhabits, one which presents Japanese supermarkets like the Wild West with the absence of any legal regulations or government oversight. Discount Demon is determined to eliminate the competition so they can raise prices, while both outlets engage in actions such as repacking food with a new expiry date, mixing meats and passing them off as more expensive cuts and even falsely advertising imported meat as being home-breed Japanese.

The exterior and interior of Honest Mart is a world of unbridled, Americana-inspired artifice with its frequent use of checkered patterns and bright colours (in particular the film's prominent use of pink and red) as well as a general warm and fuzzy atmosphere. To accompany this is the film's soundtrack to consumer capitalism - stereotypically, catchy department store music by composer Toshiyuki Honda. Can any lost media sleuths track down an isolated version of the score? As far as weirdly specific film accolades go, Supermarket Woman is the 2nd best Supermarket-themed film I've ever seen. The top spot goes to oddly enough, another Japanese film, Mikio Naruse's Yearning (1964). Recommend for a slightly more unorthodox double-feature experience.

Once again starring his wife, Nobuko Miyamoto, it is the story of her character's campaign to improve the fortunes of a local grocer. Told with Itami's trademark wit and eye for life's oddest characters. I was fortunate to see this at the Seattle International Film Festival in 1997 and am saddened that it has failed to attract domestic distribution. More tragic, of course, was the untimely passing of dir. Juzo Itami shortly after the completion of his last film in 1998.