The Cinematheque

“An inexhaustible masterpiece [and] a film which deserves to be better known.”

Brad Stevens, Sight and Sound

This adaptation of a Hayashi Fumiko novel must surely count among Naruse’s most unsparing portraits of wedlock come asunder. Takamine Mieko stars as housewife Mineko, whose ten-year marriage to salaryman Toichi (Uehara Ken, Naruse’s go-to negligent husband) has disintegrated into a chilly acquaintanceship managing lodgers in their boarding house. When Mineko, struggling to earn extra income, learns of her husband’s infidelity with a coworker, a decision looms as to whether her troubled marriage is worth saving. Naruse doesn’t admonish either party for wrongdoing, but his locked-off compositions framing Mineko in the home reinforce the limits of freedom to which she has become prisoner. Bookended by scenes of the couple’s silent morning routines while resentment and marital agony fester, Wife is an unblinking look at domestic estrangement with no easy answers or, being a Naruse picture, happy endings.

In Japanese with English subtitles

“Formally deceptive, dense, and ultimately powerful.”

Dan Sallitt, A Mikio Naruse Companion