- Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
- AMG Rating:
- Genre: Avant-garde / Experimental
- Movie Type: Psychological Drama
- Themes: Obsessive Quests, Kidnapping
- Main Cast: Eiji Okada, Kyoko Kishida, Koji Mitsui, Hiroko Ito, Sen Yano
- Release Year: 1964
- Country: JP
- Run Time: 123 minutes
Plot
When entomologist Jumpei (Eiji Okada) travels to sand dunes on an expedition, he is met by a group of people who offer him a place to spend the night. They soon lead him to a house at the bottom of a sandpit. Upon climbing into the pit, he finds a young widow (Kyoko Kishida) living alone. Placed there by the villagers, her task is to dig sand out of the pit -- not only so that they can avoid getting buried, but so that the locals can use it for construction. The next morning, when Jumpei attempts to leave, he finds that the ladder which brought him into the pit is no longer there and the villagers inform him that he must stay and help the woman dig. After trying to get out of the pit, Jumpei takes his anger out on the woman--only to soon become her lover. After some time, he slowly gives in to accepting his predicament. This interesting story takes a simple yet effective route in philosophical allegory, focusing upon the couple's oppressive confinement and the force of their physical attraction to each other in spite of--or because of--their situation. Taken from the novel by Kobo Abe, director/producer Hiroshi Teshigahara completed this visually stunning feature on a budget of only $100,000. Winning a Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1964, the poetic Woman in the Dunes would go on to be nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Foreign Film (1964) and Best Director (1965). ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide
Review
Woman in the Dunes is a landmark of 1960s art-house cinema that mesmerizes with its hypnotic logic and seduces with its lush sensuality. Recalling the existentialist absurdity of Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit and Samuel Beckett's Happy Days, director Hiroshi Teshigahara spins this deceptively simple parable about a man inexplicably stuck in a hole with a lonely widow. He initially struggles against his assigned task of shoveling sand and attempts to escape, but, by the end of the film, like Sisyphus, he accepts his fate and does not leave when given the chance. Though noted Japanese novelist Kobo Abe's script deals with universal questions about life and existence, the film also has a particularly Japanese subtext about national identity in the face of Japan's rapid modernization after World War II. The film opens with the unnamed protagonist's looking like the model modern Japanese, dressed in Western garb and acting as an individual. Yet, after he accepts his role as part of that odd community, he is dressed in a traditional Japanese garment. Only then does the narrator reveal his name. The film's philosophical/sociological underpinnings aside, it is a stylistic tour-de-force. Critics at the time commented on the film's intoxicatingly erotic atmosphere, and Teshigahara's brilliant handing of the camera seems to communicate how it feels to touch a lonely widow's naked, sand-speckled back. Few films have so deftly explored the tactile aspects of cinema and no film has photographed sand with such vitality, making the dunes shift and tumble like a slithering viper. Woman in the Dunes is a brilliant, surreal work that will linger for days, if not years, after viewing. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie GuideCast
- Eiji Okada - Niki Jumpei
- Kyoko Kishida - Woman
Koji Mitsui Hiroko Ito - Jumpei's WifeSen Yano
