Wife (1953)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Wife (1953) – M. Naruse

If this were the first film by Mikio Naruse that you watched, it might floor you.  But as someone who has now seen 20 of his films, I think it isn’t quite in a class with his best films.  Yes, it draws you into its world and its ordinary characters experiencing ordinary human drama. It might be interesting for you to see Japan in the 1950s, where characters still talk about having lost their husbands or brothers in the war. Some women still wear kimonos but others have taken to Western dress. There’s a certain desperation about economic circumstances that pervades this film (the central couple runs a boarding house) and many of Naruse’s works (in almost every one of his films characters talk about money). This is heightened because women are the leads and focus of his oeuvre.  His best films often star Hideko Takamine (or sometimes Setsuko Hara, who was Ozu’s muse) but this one features Mieko Takamine (no relation) who took the part when Hideko declined.  She plays the titular wife and Ken Uehara (another Naruse regular) plays her husband.  Their 10-year-old childless marriage is coming apart.  Both are unsatisfied with the other and with their lives.  Eventually the husband starts an affair with his widowed secretary which continues even after she moves away to Osaka (from Tokyo), when they travel to visit each other.  The film shows us what happens when the wife finds out.  Naruse’s point-of-view seems to be that everyone has their reasons and no one is completely right or wrong.  Yet, society has (or had) strong views about this situation and how it should play out. Naruse’s films have a strong vein of pessimism and there’s a melancholy feel that can’t be avoided when you see how society’s shackles block characters from pursuing their dreams. People end up in dead ends and inertia keeps them there.  It’s no different in Wife but the bluntness of the ending might catch you by surprise (if this were your first Naruse film).  For mature audiences.