The act by which a man expresses his own will and determination. The protagonist is constantly searching for her own determination, raising the question of how far a woman can free herself from social expectations, job insecurity, and the commodification of her body. In a male-dominated society, she is always seen as subordinate to the boss, the supervisor, and even the other employees. She would like to exploit the desire these men feel for her, to connect with them and escape a life of routine and alienation, yet she remains forever unsatisfied, from the emptiness of repeated failures.
Tane (Rie Nakagawa) is the secretary of a rubber products manufacturing company, who lives on the second floor of the warehouse, overlooking Tokyo Bay, right in the port area. Besides receiving visits from her lover, company director Miyoshi (Hosei Komatsu), she is the object of desire of all the employees: the teenager Kentaro (Kentaro Fukuchi), the supervisor Kikuchi (Jun Tenbo), who proposes to her, and the new employee, the charming Shoji (Takeo Chii).
Toshiya Fujita's direction (6.0) remains sober and intimate, despite the subject matter lending itself to a more morbid style; Shozo Matsuda's screenplay (6.5) avoids any narrative dilution, maintaining a fairly clear focus despite the episodic structure with some relationships not fully developed; from a technical standpoint (6.0), Yoshihiro Yamazaki's cinematography is harsh and narrow, reinforcing the protagonist's existential claustrophobia; Natsuo Kawafune's production design, featuring a port setting, becomes a metaphor for the boundary between private life and work, between desire and survival; the cast (6.5) is solid in its leading roles, with Nakagawa sufficiently empathetic and free from any moralism, while the men represent different archetypes that serve to highlight the imbalances in different male-female relationships.
Best moment: the youthful rebellion against the exploitation, hierarchy, and social control afforded by the dominant position of the employer... he doesn't accept it and decides to destroy everything!!! A must-see for those who enjoy investigations into human relationships, desire, and social structures in Japan (with a touch of morbidity).
