"After midnight, I went to your room, barefoot. The door wasn't locked. That was our first night together. Now I'm here, and I don't know what to do. Take me. Do what you want with me."
Hideko Takemine is a powerhouse in this film, simply dazzling, so expressive and with such range. That's a good thing, because the melodramatic story is so bleak it becomes a little difficult to watch otherwise, especially over 123 minutes.
The film is at its strongest early on, as it wastes no time in getting in to this story of a woman (Takemine) who has returned from French Indochina after the war in the hopes of rekindling an affair she had with a married man (Masayuki Mori). Naruse moves effortlessly between past and present to fill in the story, and the emotions of forbidden desire are complemented by the beautiful cinematography. Eventually the married guy whips out the old "I don't want to hurt you anymore," line, followed by "It was like a dream we shared then," and from then on the woman flounders, trying to make ends meet by being the kept woman of an American soldier, but still carrying a torch for him.
As the film then stays in the present, it's too long given the dreary lives these characters lead. It's frustrating the way the woman continues to love this guy despite his playing around, treating her poorly, and eventually having no money of his own. He meets yet another woman at a spa (Mariko Okada), one who takes a bath with him and calls him "daddy," and her jealousy intensifies. As a measure of her devotion, however, she makes clear she'll die with him in the mountains if he decides to. To her a mutual suicide is the expression of love and commitment that she so longs to hear from this guy, and it becomes a recurring theme.
Despite my frustrations with the story, I loved how sympathetic it was to women, who don't seem to have a lot of opportunities and seem to be at the mercy of men. We find out that Takemine's character was raped by her brother-in-law, the telling of which is economical but hits like a bolt of lightning, and then later which she says "you humiliated me for three years" it's clear it was a nightmare repeated countless times. It also recalls the statement she made that while in Indochina, she had to fend off a man who entered who room in the middle of the night. Takemine's character also has an abortion because Mori's character will not settle down with her, and we feel her physical and emotional pain.
In addition to the heartache of unrequited love, Naruse thus touched on some of the most painful things to women: rape and the threat of rape, serial adultery from emotionally shallow men, having little to no agency, and facing a decision about abortion. I give it credit it for all that, but the story just loads these on while heading for a predictably sad ending (and sorry, but by that point I had no empathy for the tears of Mori's character). To me the real reason to watch this one is Hideko Takemine, who's brilliant.
