• 乱れる (Yearning)

12/12/20 (Fri)

A 1964 film by Naruse, surprisingly still filming in black-and-white. A country woman Reiko (Takamine Hideko) lost her husband in the war after only six months of marriage, and their small Tokyo shop was destroyed by wartime bombing. In the 18 years since, she has effectively single-handedly rebuilt the store to even greater prosperity while continuing to live with her mother-in-law. Her late husband’s younger brother Koji (Kayama Yuzo) graduated college and had a good salaried position, but has mysteriously quit and leads a dissolute life at home. Her sisters-in-law are plotting to convert the shop into a supermarket and eject Reiko despite the mother-in-law’s sentimental attachment to her and Koji’s surprisingly staunch defense of her for all the work she’s done. Reiko refuses to consider remarriage, devoting herself to the memory of her late husband. We finally learn why Koji has jettisoned his promising career and is hanging around the shop: he has long harbored feelings for his sister-in-law despite the 12-year age gap and their family ties. When he finally confesses to her, she is shocked and dazed (as in the film’s Japanese title), too tied to notions of propriety and wifely dignity even to consider the idea. The inability of both Reiko and Koji to let go has tragic consequences.

Very well made, a solid story with credible characters (such as the blunt business-like sisters), great acting. So why did it leave me unmoved? The large bits of expository dialogue didn’t help, and Reiko’s determination to maintain the social niceties and deny herself a life – nearly two decades after the death of a man she was married to for only half a year – was frustrating in the manner presented here. I really wanted her to fight back, but she came off as weak. The film ended in a whimper with the soppy ending, particularly Reiko’s silent-movie-like reaction to hearing the news. They could have come up with something better than this melodramatic touch. Reiko’s desperate rush to follow the crowd as the movie abruptly ends is supposedly iconic, but it just felt overdone. Naruse’s films usually give us some hope for the future, but it’s hard to take any positive message away from this. The mother-in-law’s limp willingness to let her daughters throw Reiko out on the streets was also unrealistic after all their years together. I was similarly unconvinced by the suicide of Koji’s friend due to his inability to compete with the successful new supermarket, which sold eggs and other goods at less than half his price, as by the gathering at the bar where the supermarket managers cheer as women compete, to Koji’s disgust, to eat the most eggs. The threat of the ultra-cheap supermarket to the long-standing neighborhood shops would have been used by Kurosawa as a critique of unbridled capitalism, but here it’s just a plot point.

Takamine and Kayama were fine as always if workmanlike. The best performances were the supporting players, with special kudos to the barbed sisters, well played by Shirakawa Yumi and especially Kusabue Mitsuko, and the mother, an excellent Aiko Mimasu. The film had its moments, as when it showed the couple’s emerging feelings in the train ride to Yamagata, and the script was generally fine. I just wish Naruse had reined in the sentiment. I wonder if he was under pressure to deliver a crowd pleaser.