Viyon no tsuma

This is an engrossing, well made and well acted film.

There is, however, a static quality to it that quickly becomes tedious. Within the first five minutes you know everything there is to know about the two lead characters: at the end of the film they are exactly the same. The husband, superbly played by Asano Tadanobu, is a spoiled, selfish, deceitful and self-pitying alcoholic writer. His beautiful and passive wife, played by Matsu Takako, is loving, forgiving, accepting and, ultimately, masochistic.

Both these characters are prototypes: the tortured artist and the self sacrificing, long suffering wife. At times his overwhelming lack of basic decency is almost comical. And her ever present gentle smile and gracious acceptance of his sadistic behavior and treatment -- not only of her, but of their child -- makes her increasingly appear not as an admirable woman but an enabling fool.

As the emotional abuse and mistreatment accumulate, the entire plot focuses on a single, simple question: will the wife at least acknowledge to herself the demeaning and brutal reality of her marriage, or will she continue to smile and accept her monster of a husband. The smile wins.