Yearning

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).

The first part of this film makes it look like its main focus is going to be on one of the perils of capitalism, that of large companies driving smaller ones out of business by moving into a neighborhood and undercutting them on prices, kind of like a much more serious version of Supermarket Woman (1996). I thought my review might start with, people, if you value your mom and pop shops, for the of god, stop shopping at Walmart and Amazon. That is certainly a component here, but this film broadens into so much more, dealing with societal expectations for Japanese women and slowly developing an incredibly touching romance.

Hideko Takemine plays Reiko, the widowed daughter-in-law who has been running a grocery store for her in-law family for 18 years, since the end of WWII. She built the store on her own while the rest of the family fled to the countryside to avoid Allied bombing, and lost her beloved husband to the war. A large supermarket moves in and begins taking her shop's business, but worse yet, her sisters-in-law, their husbands, and her mother-in-law have hatched a plan to tear down the grocery and build a supermarket of their own. Despite everything she's done for them, they want her out of the picture, either through re-marriage or relegation to a minor job in the new store.

Resisting this plan is the younger brother (Yuzo Kayama), who was just 7 years old when his brother met Reiko, so perhaps 10-15 years younger than her. (I was surprised this was the actual age difference between Kayama and Takemine, since Takemine at 40 looks so young and is absolutely gorgeous, but I digress.) The younger brother is a bit of a profligate, gambling, sleeping around with women, and staying out to all hours and getting drunk. He stands up for Reiko, and we soon find out that in addition to his sense of fairness, it's because he harbors feelings for her.

Reiko seems like the epitome of ideal womanhood, something which is as limiting as it is unfair. She holds a torch for her late husband with no desire to remarry, and selflessly works away with a smile. She would rather sacrifice her own feelings than complain or cause antagonism. Her emotions are generally well concealed, but Takemine is masterful in revealing them as the story places out. Watch the look of shock and horror on her face when the younger man declares himself, the tears coming to her eyes on the train, or her conflicted look when denying him even after admitting she loves him. She's brilliant.

It seems like it would be the easiest thing in the world for her to be happy in a new marriage, but she's weighted down with feeling a need to stay loyal to her dead husband, what others will think about the age difference, and how she'll be ruining this young guy's promising life. She's a genuinely virtuous person, but I got the sense that she had also internalized too much of the societal expectation to be perfectly selfless. A long, overnight train ride through the country and growing attachment between the pair leads to swirling emotions and unforgettable scenes, played so well by both Takemine and Kayama. Great stuff from Mikio Naruse.

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

In the War, Hideko Takamine married a soldier. He was killed within six months. His family's liquor store was caught in a bombing raid, and while most of the community fled, she singlehandedly worked to rebuild the business. Now eighteen years have passed and the store and the family are prosperous. However, there are two new supermarkets in town, drawing all the business. Yûzô Kayama, her husband's younger brother, has been strangely lazy. He had a job with a good corporation, but quit. Instead of working at the store, he spends his days loafing. Yet he is smart enough to realize that, with the store's good location, there is an answer: convert to a supermarket. The family is enthusiastic. His sisters' husbands are willing to back the expanded venture in return for directorships, and the sisters are ecstatic. Yûzô says that Hideko will have to be an executive; she has, after all, saved the family and run the store for almost two decades. The sisters think this is ridiculous; she is not, they insist, a blood relative. Nothing gets done. Hideko is only vaguely aware of the proposal, because her brother-in-law won't talk about it. then he tells her the secret he has been silent about for so long:he is in love with her.

Here's Mikio Naruse again, plowing the same patch he did for so many years, the Shomin-Gekim. He was often compared to Ozu, to his own detriment. Although he produced masterpieces, there is nowhere near as much consideration of his work. He did not concern himself with the workings of the family, but with the individual, usually the oppressed woman (although Kamaya suffers for his love, Miss Takamine is not even permitted to consider the matter): very bad! His focus is not the collective. He does not plant his camera humbly on the mat and look at his subject through long, unmoving takes: very bad! How is a film critic supposed to recognize his style? He does not use the same actors, over and again, in much the same roles: very bad! A true auteur tells the same story, over and over! His characters suffer the strictures of society, with only private tears: very bad! The bourgeouisie win again!

It's a false dichotomy, as if by admiring Ozu more, we must despise his colleagues. I admire Ozu greatly, and I also admire Naruse, who told his tales of woe with great compassion and despair, and did so with fine actors. As he does here.

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.