Une femme dans la tourmente

Mikio Naruse is of the same generation as Kurosawa, Ozu and Mitzoguchi, but he is less well known. His films have much in common with those of Yasujiro Ozu. His main themes are family relations and the tension between tradition and modernisation in Japan after World War II. His female characters are on average stronger than the women in Ozu films.

"Yearning" is one of his latest and highly rated films. It is typical of his whole oeuvre. Tradition versus modernisation is represented by the mom and dad stores threatened by the rise of supermarkets. The strong woman is the young widow who has build up the mom and dad store of her parents in law after her husband died in World War II. Family complications arise when the family (mostly the daughters) plans to sell the premise of the store to a supermarket and wants to get rid of their sister in law. That they rap up this message in the form of concern (isn't it time for their sister in law to remarry?) makes is no less selfish.

With the widowed sister in law as the only likeable character in the film one almost has has to think of "Tokyo story" (1953, Yasujiro Ozu).

I saw this film in French, with the title "Une Femme Dans La Tourmente". A year later I still think about it. Postwar Japan is gearing up for the period of "rapid growth", and many of the small family-owned businesses and the families that run them are being swept away. Reiko has supported her late husband's family with her indefatigable work throughout the war and still cooks, cleans and takes up the slack. The family was quite happy to take advantage of her hard work during the hard days, but now that their remaining son is old enough to marry they find her an embarrassment. The son is a lazy young man, used to going with the flow and frankly not trying very hard at anything. When a modern supermarket chain comes to their area, many small shops are going to the wall. Should they continue to struggle on as they are, or sell out for what they can get? Reiko faces her own decision: stay or go? And if she goes, where?

I have binge watching Naruse films and have liked all but one. Yearning may be the moving both as a love story and as a story of social change. The theme of small businesses being run out by large corporations is as timely today in the US as it was in 1964 Japan. The two leads are terrific and have great chemistry. Highly recommended

I have all the respect in the world for Mikio Naruse, I really do. His films always touch on things that are still relevant- he's good at exploring timeless themes. His films always have good acting, and are also always nice to look at. They're also tremendously empathetic, and focus far more on female characters than many films from the 1950s and 60s. In that way, they also feel forward-thinking and maybe even radical.

But at the same time, I do always find them slow-going and a little hard to really get into it. There's a certain distance I feel every time I watch one of his movies, even while I recognise they're very well-made. And there's no proper criticisms I can make about it; not more than saying I just find his films a little boring.

It's a me problem. I still respect what he did as a filmmaker, and I do understand why he's so highly regarded. His movies just aren't really for me - not any I've seen yet, at least.

I saw YEARNING (MIDARERU, 1964) at a screening at New York's Asia Society on Dec. 3, 2010. It's only the second film by Mikio Naruse that I've seen, but I'm eager to see more. (The first was WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS, 1960, seen on Criterion DVD earlier this year.) YEARNING is a quiet but emotionally honest drama about Reiko, a war widow who has given her best years to her late husband's family, managing their grocery shop while Koji, her younger, handsome brother-in-law, gambles, drinks and loafs. The family plots to tear down the shop and build a supermarket in its place, pushing Reiko out of the top position. Koji protests. When he decides to take a stand, on more than one front, it changes his relationship to Reiko and forces her to make a life-changing decision.

Naruse shoots in a spare, classical style with sync-sound recording, both on location and in the studio, and gets strong performances out of the entire cast. Yuzo Kayama, whom I know primarily from period movies like SANJURO, CHUSHINGURA and SWORD OF DOOM, plays Koji as a spoiled son and brother who begins to mature before our eyes. Hideko Takamine plays the still-beautiful 30-something widow whose self-effacing front hides her own submerged desires. She never acts on her own behalf, but just dutifully runs the shop and waits for Koji to grow up. No matter what is happening in her heart, she simply won't ask for anything or accept it when it's offered. Even when she makes her big move midway through the film, it's only because she thinks it will help Koji. Reiko resembles an Ozu heroine, while Keiko, the lead character in WHEN A WOMAN, also played by Takamine, was more like a Mizoguchi heroine. The film was shot in widescreen black-and-white and the action is set mostly in a small rural town far from Tokyo where a new supermarket loudly promotes itself and its cheaper prices, causing hardship for the small shopkeepers like Reiko. (This is why Koji's family wants to expand the store-to compete.) Later, the film stays with Reiko on a train ride for a long stretch, wrapping up in a small, picturesque resort town.

Mie Hama, the petite beauty who played Kissy Suzuki, the Japanese agent who marries James Bond in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967), appears in two memorable scenes as Koji's cute and fickle young bedmate who chews gum (and spits it out on the floor of the shop) and boasts a beauty shop hairdo like American teenage girls were wearing at the time. She's quite keyed into her own desires in a way that Reiko can only envy. When she was on screen, I kind of wished the movie would stay with her for a while.

The abrupt ending may leave some viewers unsatisfied. I would have preferred some kind of epilogue, like the final scene of WHEN A WOMAN. However, I've learned to accept that with certain filmmakers like Naruse, one should take the ending on faith, even if you don't get the reason for it right away. YEARNING remains a beautiful, moving Japanese drama with an insistent subtext about the lingering effects of the war on Japanese families some 20 years after the surrender.