• 乱れ雲 (Scattered Clouds)

2/7/21 (Sun)

Scattered Clouds (also known as Two in the Shadow), Naruse’s last film, is a 1967 drama starring Hayama Yuzo and Tsukasa Yoko set in then-contemporary Tokyo. Hayama accidentally runs over and kills Tsukasa’s husband due to a burst tire just when the young well-to-do couple are preparing for a life overseas. Hayama is cleared in court but, wracked with guilt, insists on paying part of his salary on a monthly basis until a certain total is reached. Tsukasa doesn’t want to have anything to do with her husband’s murderer, but has little choice but to accept the money given her reduced circumstances – a situation that worsens when her late husband’s family remove her from their family register. She goes back to work at her sister-in-law’s inn in their hometown in Lake Towada – coincidentally near where Hayama has been reassigned in punishment for his accident. She resents his presence as it ties her to her past, and she eventually returns the money and tells him to get lost. Needless to say, he falls in love with her, and she unsurprisingly breaks down in the end as well, a feeling cemented when she has to nurse him back from a fever in an out-of-the-way hotel (it’s complicated). A Japanese film naturally can’t let them be happy, so she pulls out at the last moment from joining him in Lahore (of all places). But the trajectory of the film to that point is otherwise pretty predictable.

The theme of forgiveness and self-forgiveness is potentially compelling but not the way it’s packaged here. This is a pretty run-of-the-mill melodrama, and Hayama in particular doesn’t have the personality to take it to the next level. The drama is not set up especially well by Naruse, such as the clumsy handling of the funeral where Hayama apologizes to Tsukasa. Several aimless shots like the woman’s white bag were just confusing. Atypically for Naruse, it all felt artificial. Tsukasa was fine, but it was the minor players who shined, especially Mori Mitsuko and Kusabue Mitsuko as Tsukasa’s sister-in-law and sister and the ever-reliable Kato Daisuke. This film is often cited as one of Naruse’s masterpieces, but I find it hard to agree.