The Cinematheque

“A peculiar, almost conceptual project that operates out of the stance of the sentimental family drama … Filled with fragmentary and digressive scenes, Mother is perhaps Naruse’s most Fordian work in its use of music and voiceover to create a level, retrospective mood.”

Dan Sallitt, A Mikio Naruse Companion

The preeminent actor and pioneering female director Tanaka Kinuyo is known for her appearances in many of Japanese cinema’s greatest masterpieces, including numerous works by Mizoguchi and Ozu. She also made several important films with Naruse, including the much-loved Mother, one of the director’s most celebrated achievements and one of the few Naruse films to be contemporaneously distributed in the West. A classic hahamono (mother picture) that avoids the mawkishness typical of that popular genre, the film features Tanaka as a widow with three children struggling to maintain the dry cleaning business left by her late husband. The story is told from the point of view of her eldest daughter, played by Kagawa Kyoko in what Donald Richie has described as ​“one of the most sensitive teenage performances in Japanese cinema.” The screenplay is among the first by Mizuki Yoko, who would also write Naruse’s Floating Clouds and later, Kobayashi Masaki’s Oscar-nominated Kwaidan.

In Japanese with English subtitles

“A sensitive and searching portrait of familial heartbreak in postwar Japan.”

Amanda Brason, TIFF