Also filmed in 1964, and also in stunning b/w, Horoshi Teshigahra’s Woman in the Dunes shares another quality of Onibaba’s (see previous post)- that is, it is set in an unbearably claustrophobic situation. More so even as the drama unfolds in a huge sand pit where an educated Tokyo man is tricked while gathering butterflies for his collection into staying the night in the pit with a woman in a small hut, only to find the rope ladder he needs to exit as been removed the next day. There he is gradually forced oout of necessity into digging out buckets of sand to prevent the house from being buried as well as using the sand as a trade for food and water. The local villagers taunt him and torment him and the mysterious woman, who has long resigned herself to her fate, becomes dependent on him and infatuated with him. The mood is excruciating and it is never really explained who the villagers are or why the whole thing even happens. Rather we witness the man’s reluctant acceptance of his perpetual Sisyphus like task and even his inevitable immersion into it. The cinematography is fantastic and the acting tense and nerve racking. There is a steamy erotic quality to the film without it ever once being graphic or exploitative. Both films are masterpieces of postwar Japanese cinema and I do not have to be a film scholar to make that statement.

WOMAN IN THE DUNES TRAILER

WOMAN IN THE DUNES CLIP

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Japanese and Asian Cinema, Videos . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.