A teacher carrying out research on a remote beach finds himself caught in a trap engineered by local hicks. The teacher is an intellectual: he feels sure his wits will enable him to manufacture an escape. But release gets ever further away, and his surroundings draw him in more and more...
In film school, a teacher told me a story about narrative. A man, obsessed with crossing a hole full of water, works feverishly at the undertaking. He has no success, until one days he wakes and finds the scorching sun has evaporated the water. The man goes to the tap and re-fills the hole. Woman in the Dunes is that premise on a grander canvas.
Jumpei is a sophisticate who, while grateful for the hospitality afforded him by the locals, also takes that gift as his social right. The woman who is his host has no such airs and graces, but her self-awareness and social awareness are far more refined than Jumpei's.
The world the film creates is both uncanny and all too familiar. Sand has never seemed so complex, so seductive, so intimidating. Jumpei and the woman are forced to shovel sand to survive. Aren't we all? Jumpei and the woman come together as a couple because of limited options. Many couples will sympathise. Given the chance to fundamentally change his life, Jumpei opts for the status quo. The choice is momentous and banal, and universally understood.
Eiji Okada as Jumpei is outstanding, all bombast and outrage, and then quietly confounded. Kyôko Kishida as the Woman is simply mesmerising, comely and beguiling in the mode of the English milkmaid in British Victorian novels, but with a more aquatic air (the proximity of the sea is deliciously hinted at in this arid world of sand). The story is incredibly simple, almost a parable, but inhabited with authentic characters who give it three dimensions.
We all, at some point, settle. We all compromise. We all give in. This film takes that bleak reality and presents it to us wrapped in cinematic beauty.
In film school, a teacher told me a story about narrative. A man, obsessed with crossing a hole full of water, works feverishly at the undertaking. He has no success, until one days he wakes and finds the scorching sun has evaporated the water. The man goes to the tap and re-fills the hole. Woman in the Dunes is that premise on a grander canvas.
Jumpei is a sophisticate who, while grateful for the hospitality afforded him by the locals, also takes that gift as his social right. The woman who is his host has no such airs and graces, but her self-awareness and social awareness are far more refined than Jumpei's.
The world the film creates is both uncanny and all too familiar. Sand has never seemed so complex, so seductive, so intimidating. Jumpei and the woman are forced to shovel sand to survive. Aren't we all? Jumpei and the woman come together as a couple because of limited options. Many couples will sympathise. Given the chance to fundamentally change his life, Jumpei opts for the status quo. The choice is momentous and banal, and universally understood.
Eiji Okada as Jumpei is outstanding, all bombast and outrage, and then quietly confounded. Kyôko Kishida as the Woman is simply mesmerising, comely and beguiling in the mode of the English milkmaid in British Victorian novels, but with a more aquatic air (the proximity of the sea is deliciously hinted at in this arid world of sand). The story is incredibly simple, almost a parable, but inhabited with authentic characters who give it three dimensions.
We all, at some point, settle. We all compromise. We all give in. This film takes that bleak reality and presents it to us wrapped in cinematic beauty.