Miss Oyu

Heart-wrenching and sad tale of love and sacrifice under harsh traditional rules is told in beautiful, lyrical black-and-white imagery and the cast perform excellently throughout, especially Kinuyo Tanaka in the title role.

Yûji Hori has hired a match maker, but he has rejected all of her proposed ladies. Finally she brings to him Nobuko Otowa. He is iffy about her, and the match maker's patience is running short. Does he even know what he is looking for in a wife? He knows. It is the woman who accompanied Miss Otowa, her widowed sister Kinuyo Tanaka. However, her son is the clan heir, and therefore she may not remarry. She urges him to marry her sister, so she can visit her.

Kenji Mizoguchi's movie is not one of his great movies, but it is an impeccably executed bit of soap opera. All three principals are aware of each other's feelings, and nothing is said. When Miss Tanaka's son dies, she is thrust from her home, her brother will not take her in, nor can she move in with her sister -- the gossip would only increase.

As I said, it's not one of Mizoguchi's major works, but that doesn't mean he did a shoddy job; he seemed incapable of that. The last two shots, with their subjective cameras, are heartbreaking.

A man falls in love with the sister of his bride-to-be, but all parties involved are bound by societal constraints. The film has the usual stunning cinematography, with graceful tracking moves and elegant framing. The story is engaging, easy to follow and doesn't drag. It's an all-around good movie. But as I've said before, lately I'm getting bored with Mizoguchi. His films just don't thrill me like they used to. It gets kind of tiresome to watch people hang their heads and bemoan their situations all the time. I get that the point is they're being repressed by archaic social expectations, but it'd be nice to see a little more resistance. Everyone is so damn passive. Again, it's a well-crafted film but one that doesn't really inspire a lot of sympathy for the characters.

Shinnosuke accepts to marry Shizu in order to be closer to her sister, a widowed wife and mother of a son. Shizu proposes him marriage because doing so would mean staying near her sister, not marrying him and marrying another man would mean to separate from her. Japanese customs forbid Oyu (shizu's sister) to marry another man because it is her duty to educate his son for him to become one day the head of her deceased husband family. Oyu has the same feelings Shinnosuke has for her, so the marriage between him and her sister allows them to be together apparently with no suspicion. The three of them develop a strange bond.

There's really not much to say about the technical aspects in this film, if you know Mizoguchi's directing you know you're in good hands. Anyway though, as usual, the scenes are beautifully shot. I even found myself really liking the music here, it adds perfectly to the atmosphere.

Overall, this is another another great film from Mizoguchi that's worth the time.

Set in contemporary Japan to the director, specifically in Kyoto, the film tells the story of a young man who falls in love with his wife's widowed older sister. This triggers a deep triangle of feelings and drama that the director stages with his unique style of theatricality and artistic attention to every scene. Much refinement in the way of treating the story and psychological attention to the characters who are immersed in a country and a society where living and loving completely seems almost impossible.. One of the most beautiful films by Mizoguchi that I have seen. The character of Mrs. Oyu stands out strongly for her charm and remains very much as an image.

For a few moments, Truffaut's film Jules and Jim from 1962 immediately came to mind.